Ramble On
by BlackIceWitch
Summary: Ramble On 'verse. Set S2. Dean and Sam are getting the feeling that demonic forces are getting more and more prevalent, a feeling confirmed when they take on a job and find themselves targeted. An enigmatic hunter with an unforeseen link to their past helps out in time of need. No slash. No spoilers. Revised from original version. First story in series.
1. Chapter 1

**Ramble On**

**Chapter 1**

* * *

**November 2006, Nebraska**

The jukebox played softly in the corner, but the bar and tables were almost empty. In the wan sunlight that came in through the grubby windows, the mismatched tables and chairs scattered through the room looked old and scarred; the ceilings were stained and grimy from the combination of years of cigarette smoke and soot from the woodstove, and the slightly warped and cracked timber boards of the floor threw odd shadows, revealing their distortions even without the telltale creaks of being trodden on.

Ellen Harvelle, proprietor and part-owner of Harvelle's Roadhouse, stood behind the bar, a lean, tanned woman in her forties, maple-gold hair loose over her shoulders and framing a strong, square face. In jeans, a low-cut tee shirt and soft flannel shirt half-unbuttoned over that, she radiated a no-nonsense vibe that tended to kill barroom arguments before they got started, one look from the sharp, whiskey-brown eyes letting everyone know who the hell was in charge in the ramshackle bar. She was polishing glasses and pretending that she wasn't waiting for a call, despite the fact that her eyes swept over the black phone hanging on the wall every five minutes or so.

At a table mid-way between the u-shaped bar and the ancient pool table, Dean Winchester rubbed his eyes and set down the last of the papers he'd picked up in town. Slouched back in the chair, his broad-shouldered frame half-sprawled into the gap between the tables, the stained and torn jeans, muted plaid shirt and dark brown leather car coat he wore couldn't disguise the tension, almost invisible but not quite, that surrounded him. Not a person to mess with, it suggested. He looked young, except for his eyes. Short, dark hair was spiky under the overhead lights, the tips a little lighter. Green eyes, wary and too old for the rest of him, were framed in long, thick lashes. High cheekbones and a strong jaw gave his face a dark menace in repose. He could look charmingly boyish when he smiled, but the smiles didn't come that often and they lit up the green of his eyes even less.

On the other side of the table, his brother's face was lit by the laptop's screen, Sam's slightly olive-toned skin painted with the reflections of the sites he was skipping through. Thick, dark chestnut hair flopped over his forehead, almost covering his brows. Taller than his brother, he shared the same broad shoulders, wide chest and cleft chin, his eyes hazel, sometimes more green, sometimes more grey, quiet and watchful but without the hard-edged suspicious nature that characterised his older sibling.

Glancing up briefly at Dean's noisy and frustrated exhale, Sam tapped the screen. There was something in Hemingway, about three hours away from the roadhouse. Something that looked like their kind of thing.

"Sixteen people so far, Dean," Sam said, reading the news report half under his breath, hitting the facts out loud. "Hospitalised, dead within a week."

Picking up the almost-empty beer from the table and finishing the remainder, Dean leaned back in his chair and tried to summon some enthusiasm for whatever it was that Sam had found. "Why were they hospitalised?"

"Chronic fatigue, low red blood cell count, anaemia … ah, one guy had lost forty pounds in the space of a week, he went in looking like a skeleton." Sam looked across to his brother, frowning. "Sounds like a shtriga, but they don't attack adults, only kids."

Dean shook his head, and straightened up in the chair, absently rubbing a hand along the day's growth over his jaw as he searched his memories for anything that matched the list. "Yeah. Although, that one we killed did go after you when the kid was safe."

"It's not quite the right MO." Sam looked back at the laptop. "What else drains life?"

Pulling the leather-bound book from his coat pocket, Dean opened his father's journal, and started flipping through the pages. He knew every page by heart, and he knew that there was nothing in there that fit, but he looked anyway. Reading through John Winchester's journal was a ritual that kick-started his memories, his knowledge, more readily than anything else.

Werewolves, ghosts, wendigo and demons and vampires, skinwalkers, shape-shifters, the book was like the compendium of any good horror writer, a record of the years his father had been hunting in the dark, the diagrams and notations probably enough to keep a shrink busy for years.

"Nothing in here, anyway," he said, closing it when nothing jumped out at him. "Is it just me or are we finding more and more monsters?" He picked up his cell from the table. "I'll see if it rings any bells with Bobby."

The bar phone rang and Ellen snatched up the handset. "Jo?"

Sam scanned the hits returned for anything that could match the symptoms he'd been reading about. The problem with the internet, he thought as he waded through pages and pages of technical medical opinions, was not a lack of information but too much. And too much that was garbage. He ignored the two telephone conversations going on to either side of him, his attention sharpening as a listing caught his eye, tucked in between a discourse from a doctor at Princeton and a research article from a CDC medical team in Africa.

He opened it, his eyes widening as he read fast down the page of information.

"Okay, thanks, Bobby." Dean closed the cell. "He can't think of anything that fits either, but he's gonna look."

"I think I've got something here." Sam turned the laptop around. "Look at this."

Dean leaned forward and scanned the page quickly, then returned to the top, and started reading the detail, his brows drawing together. The blurb at the top claimed the site belonged to the U of M's Anthropology Department, which was in the process of scanning in many mythological texts and ancient documents from around the world. He read through the details of the mythological creature much feared in Eastern Europe for its debilitating attacks on entire towns.

"Bloodwraith." He looked at Sam, brows raised. "Who knew?"

"I haven't heard of a real one before either, not in this country." Sam swivelled the laptop back to face him. "It's a legend. There's no real lore about it, let alone a set of instructions on how to kill it."

"I guess we can start with silver; that works with regular wraiths. Then we work our way through everything else if it doesn't." Dean rested his elbows on the small table, his eyes becoming a little distant as he mentally reviewed what they had in the trunk of the car. "Iron, salt maybe to trap it, stake through the heart, decapitation."

Sam looked around as Ellen's voice rose suddenly. "Jo Beth Harvelle, you'll do no such thing!"

The brothers exchanged a glance. When Ellen took on that tone, it was time to go.

Sam closed the laptop and slipped it back into the leather satchel. Dean gathered the piles of papers and tucked them into his father's journal. They stood, Sam finishing his beer quickly, and following Dean out as he left the bar. They could still hear Ellen, even after the front door had shut.

"So, Hemingway?" Sam put the laptop in the back of the Impala. Dean nodded, leaning past to drop the journal there as well. He walked around to the driver's side and got in, turning the key as his brother eased his long frame into the passenger seat.

"Wonder what Jo was doing to get that reaction?" Sam grinned suddenly.

Dean shook his head. He didn't want to know. Jo was a kid. She'd done alright with the ghost of the serial killer, although she wouldn't've if he and Sam hadn't been there as well. The time between when she'd been taken and when he and Sam had finally found her had changed his view of her for good. He'd been as scared of what Ellen would do to him if he'd lost her daughter as he'd been of the ghost killing Jo before he could get there. She had plenty of enthusiasm, he thought, a little disparagingly, but too much to prove – to her mother, the memories of her father, even to him, he'd thought at the time. It made her careless and the one thing no hunter could afford to be in this life was careless. His father had drummed that into him and Sam from the moment they'd been old enough to understand.

* * *

It took a little over three hours to drive to Hemingway, and the two motels in the little town were both shut tight when they arrived. They found a discreet parking spot behind the gas station, and Sam climbed into the back, shifting around to find the place where he could almost, but not quite, stretch out. Dean settled down along the front bench seat. The Impala's interior was a little over six foot in width. Perfect for him. Not so much for his little brother who'd insisted on growing the extra inches.

As the night's chill sucked the last of the lingering warmth from the car, Dean clenched his jaw against the thoughts that screamed around the same track they always did when he had nothing to do, no distractions and too much time to think. His father's voice had been low but clear. He hadn't explained. The order had hit Dean like a sledgehammer and when he'd jerked back and looked up at the man he'd followed and obeyed his whole life, he'd seen his father's despair, hidden a moment later, but there. Nothing could've convinced him more thoroughly that it was real.

He didn't know how to deal with it. Didn't know what he was supposed to do. The effort of keeping it inside, a torturous secret that was cracking through his years' of armour, was impossible, spinning him from anger to desolation and back to disbelief every hour, every minute he couldn't shut it out. It was poisoning him, poisoning his thoughts and feelings the longer he tried to hold it in.

_You never considered actually making that deal, right?_

_Your dad lives a long life … we're just setting the natural order straight … he's not supposed to be down there …_

No, Dean thought, swallowing hard. He wasn't supposed to be there. But he was. And the only reason he hadn't made the deal for his father was the knowledge of how disappointed in him they both would've been.

* * *

When dawn came, two and a half hours later, Dean groaned and flung his arm over his eyes as the morning light slanted in. He rummaged in the glove box by feel for the sunglasses, fingers scrabbling past a gun, a pile of identification clips and tags, a bunch of rags, finally closing on the earpiece and snagging them. He slid them onto his face and sat up slowly.

"Think the motel will be open now?"

Sam grunted noncommittally from the back, sitting up and trying to unkink himself. He felt like a pretzel. At six foot four inches, he was just that bit too long for the otherwise spacious interior of the car. He should have slept sitting up. At least then he wouldn't have half a dozen cricks in his neck and back.

"Let's try it. I need coffee."

"Yeah, I hear that," Dean agreed, sliding over to the driver's seat and turning the key. The engine rumbled into life, and with only a minor fishtail leaving the gravel, the black car headed into town.

* * *

Dean walked into the small hospital feeling the four hours he'd missed more than the two and half hours of sleep he'd finally gotten. He looked around, and saw the front desk, giving the pretty receptionist a big smile more from habit than inclination. She smiled back, round cheeks dimpling at him.

"Can I help you, sir?"

_If I wasn't so tired_, he quipped back to himself. "Can you direct me to the intensive care ward?"

"Yes, sir," she said, her expression suggesting she was disappointed that was all he needed. "Follow the corridor to the end and turn right. It's at the end."

"Thanks." He hesitated for a moment, then decided against getting more personal. Sixteen people dead already, they had to get moving. She'd still be there when the job was finished and if he got a few more hours sleep before then, he might even be able to follow through.

He turned away and followed the directions, finding a nurse's station in front of the ward's doors. His first view of the head nurse sitting there told him she was not going to be susceptible to his smile, he thought, looking at her. He decided to go with the usual procedure, adding what he hoped was an ingratiatingly harmless smile as well.

"Hi. I'm looking for Dr …" His gaze skimmed over the files on the desk. "… Mason? Is he on call today?"

The nurse looked at him coldly, her expression disapproving and implying that she'd heard every possible excuse under the sun from those who tried to take up the doctor's valuable time. "He's doing rounds. I don't know exactly where he would be in the hospital. You can wait, or come back."

Dean's smile faltered. "Uh … I'll come back."

Heading for the turn in the corridor, he thought about giving up and trying again later, when a high-pitched buzz sounded from behind the desk. The nurse leapt to her feet, and ran into the ward. Looking around for anyone else to respond to the emergency, he hurried back to the desk, reaching for the files in the rack beside the computer, and pulling out a handful, his gaze skimming the names. The intercom burst into life above him.

"Code Blue. Dr Mason to ICU. Code Blue."

He took the top two files, hoping that neither belonged to the patient who was crashing, and ran down the hall, finding a janitor's closet at the first turn. He wrenched open the door and ducked inside as the sounds of running feet and the rattle of a crash cart went past.

Thumbing the switch on his flashlight, he opened the first file and started to flip over the charts, looking for the admission details.

Distantly he could hear the raised voices of those in ICU, giving orders, the machines beeping and buzzing. He found the listed next of kin and tucked the flashlight under his chin while he dug out his notebook and pen from the inside pocket of his coat. He took down the details and closed the file, opening the second one. He was about to start writing when his cell rang, the deep bass notes of the call tune loud in the silent closet.

Dropping the flashlight, file and book, Dean scrambled to get the damned thing out of his pocket before the whole hospital knew he was in here.

"What?" he whispered furiously.

"It's me. I found something," Sam's voice was strangely unexcited. "Where are you?"

"I'm in a hospital closet, dude. I've got the names of the families of two of the patients."

"Well, put the files back and forget about it," Sam said flatly. "The bloodwraith's been destroyed. Case over."

"What? How? Who did it?"

"I'll tell you when you get back, at least what I've found out." Sam hung up.

Dean looked down at the mess at his feet. _Sonofabitch_.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Dean wriggled the key into the lock and turned it, pushing the door open. Sam sat on the edge of one of the beds, staring at his laptop, his expression resigned as he looked up.

"Okay, so what happened?" Dean dropped his keys on the table and walked to the small fridge in the kitchenette, pulling out a beer.

"Seems like another hunter was here yesterday and finished the job," Sam told him, shrugging.

"How do you know? Who was it?" Dean sat down at the table. Sam pointed to the newspaper sitting on it, the local paper, the morning's headline above the fold.

"Warehouse fire kills one," Dean read, picking it up and unfolding it. "Fire started around 6 p.m. … blah blah … one body found … blah blah … police have no leads … blah blah."

He looked up. "What makes you think this is connected?"

"Look at the story below it."

Looking down, he read through the second story, half under his breath. "Mystery Illness Over. Patients recovering … doctors baffled …" Rubbing a hand along one side of his jaw, he glanced back at his brother. "At least one of those patients crashed this morning, it's how I got the files."

"Might have been too far gone," Sam suggested speculatively. "But the fire definitely took out the wraith – did you read to the end?"

Dean looked back to the paper in his hand. At the end of the story, there was a small note about a strange stain covering the floor near the body.

"You think the hunter ganked the wraith while it was feeding?"

"Too late to save the poor guy it was feeding on. Yeah, that'd be my best guess." Sam sighed. "Sorry, Dean. A long way to come for nothing."

"That doesn't matter," Dean said distractedly. "Any ideas on who might have done it?"

"Nope. Even the fire is being called accidental." He closed the laptop and slid it back into the leather satchel beside him. "Ellen might know?"

"Awesome. Back to the roadhouse?"

"Might as well."

"Yeah, well, we're paid up 'til tomorrow and there's a hospital receptionist with my name on her so you're on your own tonight, little brother."

"What a surprise."

* * *

It was past midday when they left Hemingway and almost dusk when Dean pulled into the dirt parking lot of the roadhouse with a grunt of disgust. It was more than half-full and his usual parking place was gone. He manoeuvred the car around to one side of the weathered building, and turned off the lights and engine.

"So now what?" Sam glanced over at him.

"Let's have the night off. Get a drink, play some pool, just let it go for one night." Dean closed his eyes, feeling an odd mix of physical weariness and mental disappointment drop over him. "What do you say?"

"Didn't we just have a night off?"

"Uh, you might've been resting last night, but I wasn't," Dean told him, opening an eye and rolling it around to look at his brother.

"It wasn't work, Dean."

He laughed. "All in the way you look at it." He straightened up in the seat, pulling the keys out. "C'mon, a couple of beers, shoot some pool … see who's in town."

"Okay with me." Sam got out of the car. "You're buying."

Dean snorted. "Loser buys."

Getting out of the car, he thought that they were overdue for a break. At least they could have a night off before they found something else, another case, a new thing to hunt. The previous evening hadn't been quite what he'd wanted, although eventually he'd managed to shed the tension he'd been living with long enough to sleep for a few hours. The roadhouse was different.

He'd thought, after spending some time there, that it would be a place he could relax, not have to lie. He'd found that he had to lie more or less all the time. As a group, hunters were eccentric and individualistic and most were more suspicious of each other than the regular citizenry. Even Ellen and Jo tended to play their cards close to their chests if there were more than two or three in the place. Following Sam through the creaking door, he slowed and blinked as they walked into the bar.

The place was almost full, every table and seat taken, the pool table surrounded three deep. They looked around and caught Ellen's eye. She waved and pointed to the end of the bar near the wall.

Finding two empty seats there, they sat down as Ellen brought them a couple of beers.

"What happened?" Sam asked, gesturing around at the room, his voice raised over the music from the jukebox and the droning hum of conversation as he accepted his. She nodded, smiling a small one-sided smile as she surveyed the room.

"Yeah, might make some money this week." She turned back to them. "Most of them are just passing through," she added, lowering her voice as she leaned closer and looked at the pool table. "By midnight we'll be back to near empty again."

"Where's Jo?" Dean asked, seeing a couple of girls weaving their way through the crowd, aprons over tight jeans and trays swinging precariously over the customer's heads.

"In Moline, working a haunting," Ellen told him sourly.

"You tell her how much she could be making back here?" Sam asked, looking around the room.

"I told her that if she didn't get her butt back here pronto, I'd reconsider the whole partnership deal," Ellen said. "No idea why that girl wants to get involved in a life that got her daddy killed," she added, her gaze shifting to Dean.

He looked away, feeling the unspoken question but disinclined to get into that. He didn't believe his father had done anything to endanger Ellen's late husband, but he couldn't quite find the arguments that would disprove it either.

"How'd the job go?" Ellen asked a moment later, obviously deciding to leave the topic alone.

"A bust, someone else beat us to it," Dean told her, taking a long swallow of his beer. "You hear of anyone working it?"

She nodded, her glance wandering around the room. "Heard Ellie was there," she said, looking at a bunch of men sitting at one of the tables on the other side of the room. "Jeb said they met her on the highway, a couple of hours ago."

"Ellie who?" Sam asked, his brow creasing up. They'd met maybe a dozen of the hunters who regularly frequented the bar, to exchange news, pick up packages that were delivered here, or just decompress from the pressures of the world they worked in. There were very few women working successfully at hunting. The ones that were tended to be known.

"Don't know her last name," Ellen said, making a sharp gesture to one of the girls to see to a table. "I ran into her on the tail end of a hunt a couple of years ago, with Jeb and Marcus, and she was young then. Smart though, and well-trained. Some kind of family problem, when she was kid, kick-started her. She comes by here, not very often."

She turned away as her name was called, gesturing toward the rear hatch of the kitchen's servery. "You boys tell Ash what you want to eat."

They nodded as she headed for the other end of the bar, and looked around the room, playing the usual game of trying to spot the hunters in the mix of people sitting at the tables, surrounding the jukebox and pool table, leaning against the bar.

Sam leaned in through the hatch and hailed Ash. He turned around and lifted his spatula in a wave that, Sam noted with an internal grimace, sent droplets of oil across the kitchen. The smell of sizzling patties and onions was strong and he held up two fingers, Ash nodding and turning back to the grill.

"Computer genius, math whiz and short-order cook," Dean commented, looking at the towering pile of roll, dark brown patties drizzled with hot sauce and melting cheese, when Ash put their plates in front of them a few minutes later.

"Pays to diversify," Ash told him with a slow smile. "I need to talk to you," he added in a much lower tone, looking suspiciously around the people in the bar. "In the morning."

"About?" Dean picked up the burger, almost inhaling the first bite.

"In the morning," Ash repeated and hurried back to the kitchen.

"He does that deliberately, doesn't he?" Dean asked Sam, pushing most of the food to one side of his mouth to get the question out.

"Yeah, I think so." Sam nodded, picking up his burger. "You know those guys?"

Dean looked across to the table Sam was eyeing. "I know Jeb Pilson," he said, his attention narrowing on the group. "Pretty sure of two of the others. Why?"

Sam's nose wrinkled up a little. "Just wondering if they knew what they were going after when they went up to Hemingway. If we were the only ones who went in blind."

Dean swallowed the last bite of his burger and washed it down with the rest of his beer, glancing at the table as he set the empty bottle on the counter. "Looks like you'll get a chance to find out," he said, watching the tall man at the end of the table get to his feet and head in their direction.

"Winchester, right? Dean?" Jeb said as he stopped next to Dean. "Ellen said your old man ain't around anymore."

"That's right," Dean told him.

"I'm very sorry for your loss, son," Jeb said, tilting his head and the overhead lamps catching the silver in the thin ash-blond hair. "He was a good man."

"Thanks," Sam said. "He was."

"You must be Sam," Jeb said, making it not quite a question.

"Yessir."

"John told me a lot about you," the older hunter said, his mouth lifting a little. "He was real proud of you."

Sam looked at his brother who gazed blandly back at him. Since the job they'd had with the demon on the plane, Sam had heard, here and there, from their father's old acquaintances, how proud he'd been of his youngest boy. Dean thought Sam still wasn't yet ready to believe it.

"You boys still in the family business?" Jeb looked at Dean and he nodded.

"We heard you got left behind in Hemingway," Sam said, glancing at his brother.

Jeb laughed. "I heard you boys did too," he said, lifting a brow at the young man.

"You know the hunter that got it?" Dean asked curiously.

"Know a bit," Jeb told him with a shrug. "Used to hunt with Michael Furente, you know of him?"

Sam looked quizzically at Dean who shook his head.

"Something happened, something that no one really talks about," Jeb continued. "He was killed. He was good, scary good. Rumour is a demon took him."

Dean felt himself flinch inside, hoping it hadn't shown outwardly. "What did his partner say?"

"She didn't," Jeb said, making a small, wry gesture. "Doesn't. Hunts alone now."

Beside him, Dean felt Sam's slight movement at the pronouncement. Their father had told them both often enough that hunting alone was a fool's job, no backup made the odds against too high. He'd hunted alone enough in the years Sam had been Stanford to know that was right. His father had also hunted alone for a lot of years, falling out with his friends, obsessed with the demon that had killed his wife.

"Anything else?" Sam asked.

"Well, she's still alive," Jeb said consideringly. "That's a pretty good endorsement right there." He looked back to the table where his friends sat. "You boys need some help, you can get a hold of me through Ellen. I just wanted to tell you that I was sorry to hear about your dad."

"Thanks," Sam said.

Dean nodded as the older man wove his way back through the crowd, turning back to the bar and pushing the empty beer bottle aside.

"You want to stay here tonight?" Sam asked, turning around as well and lifting a hand to Ellen.

"Yep," Dean answered, his gaze wandering across the room, catching sight of one of the girls Ellen periodically hired when Jo was away. Connie and Casey. He'd thought Ellen was joking when she'd told them. Both were from town. Both had shown a degree of interest in the past.

His eye was caught by a flash of red, coming through the front door. The bar's lighting caught the redhead for a moment, gleaming on her bright hair. He watched her move through the crowd, losing her several times until she reached the other corner of the u-shaped bar and sat on a free seat there. Her back was half to them, barely visible through the increasing press of the crowd. He leaned out from his stool for a better look.

The bright hair was the colour of freshly polished copper, a long sheaf, braided down half its length, the rest loose and reaching down her back to the seat. She shook her head slightly and it caught the warm golden lights above the bar, flashing again.

_Long, copper-bright hair, tangled, half-covered in blood, trailing over a back shredded by deep, dirt-filled claw marks._

Dean blinked disorientedly. The memory was vivid, but fragmentary. Where had he seen that? _When_ had he seen it? He frowned, trying to pin it down. But the more he thought about it, the further it retreated. Making a deliberate effort to leave it alone, he slid off the stool, jostling the man beside him and giving him a nod in apology, his gaze drawn back to the redhead.

She was sitting alone, and he watched her turn back to the bar, lifting her glass as Ellen bustled by. They exchanged a few words, Ellen smiling as she reached for the bottle of Scotch from the shelf behind her. She poured a double measure into the woman's glass and the redhead raised it slightly, her head tipping back as she smiled at something Ellen said. Even in profile, it was a smile he wanted to see more of.

Ignoring his brother's questioning look, Dean started to make his way around the crowded edge of the bar, stopping as Connie – or Casey – slipped in front of him, setting a tray of empty glasses on the scarred wood counter.

"Hey, haven't seen you here for a while," she said, letting the crowd press her more tightly against him.

He looked down distractedly, then lifted his gaze over her head to the bar's corner.

"Uh, yeah, you know, coming an' goin'," he muttered, taking a step to the right.

The girl stepped right as well, one hand closing firmly around the loose edge of his coat. "You stayin' tonight?"

Suppressing his impatience, he looked down. "Might be."

"How 'bout we do something about–"

"Connie! Table five," Ellen said loudly, appearing next to the tray and clearing off the empties.

"Right," Connie said, reluctantly loosing her grip on him as she turned away.

Letting out a small sigh of relief, Dean gave her a couple of seconds head start, and pushed his way along through the crowd again. The encounter disappeared from his thoughts a moment later as he saw the redhead was still at the bar, sipping her whiskey.

When he reached the corner, he stared ferociously at the guy on the seat next to her, sitting on the vacated stool when the man picked up his beer and moved off. He looked at the woman's profile, seeing a straight nose, the high curve of her cheekbones, creamy skin taut over them, shadowed in the hollows underneath. Her features were slightly sharp, the full-lipped mouth wide, darker red brows sweeping back like wings.

He leaned closer, one elbow on the bar. "Hey. Haven't seen you here before."

She turned to look at him, and he saw the scattering of pale freckles over her nose and cheeks. "I'm not what you'd call a regular."

"But you know Ellen?" he pressed, one side of his mouth curling up a little.

"A little," she agreed noncommittally, taking another sip from her glass.

"I'm Dean Winchester." He held out his hand. She looked at it for a moment, then put her own into it, her grip firm, the fingers slim and with a wiry strength as they curved around his own.

"Nice to meet you." Her smile was polite, but that was all. He couldn't see her eyes, the light above shadowing her face.

"Are you with someone here?" he asked, glancing around to see if there was anyone charging towards them, ready to see him off.

"No."

"Is it just me, or are you this gabby with everyone?" he asked, wondering at his own persistence. He didn't usually work hard for anyone, preferring to see interest in the first glance, not wanting to reveal much about himself. His misgivings disappeared when he got a sudden genuine smile from her at the comment.

She lifted her face to him, and he saw that her eyes were a jade green, flecked with gold, rimmed with dark blue, the lashes long and a darker red than her hair, darker than the brows above them.

In that split-second, the memory was back, different; _the eyes had been half-closed, one lid swollen shut, the lashes stuck together with blood_. Then it was gone.

She was looking at him closely, the smile gone. "Something wrong?"

"No," he said uneasily, pulling his attention back to the present. "Sorry, just remembered something weird." He tried to brush off the moment, wanting to see that smile again. "You didn't answer my question."

"I have to go." She slid off the seat gracefully, bending to grab the strap of her bag, a bulky leather backpack that lay at her feet.

"It was nice to meet you," she said, nodding to him briefly before turning away and making her way through the crowd to the door. Dean stood by the bar, watching her go, a little perplexed by the sudden departure, the disjointed memories still lingering at the edges of his mind.

"Crash and burn?" Ellen asked from behind the bar. "Doesn't happen to you too often, Dean."

Turning around slowly, he shrugged. "Always an exception to the rule, Ellen. Do you know who she is?"

Ellen smiled slightly. "That was Ellie."

He looked at her, feeling his brows rise. "The hunter who got the wraith?"

"The very same," Ellen confirmed, filling a glass and passing it to the man sitting next to Dean.

"Can I get another beer, Ellen?" Dean sat on empty seat, his gaze dropping to the counter top.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

* * *

He slept restlessly, twisting and turning in the narrow cot in Ellen's back room. It wasn't a nightmare, not really. Just a memory, from a long time ago.

"_It's too late, we're too late," he said to his father, looking around the wreckage of the cabin's interior._

"_Double check, Dean. We'll go right through. Take the lower floor, I'll check the upstairs. Sam? Go with your brother."_

"_Yessir."_

_Dean stepped over the remains of the __furniture __cautiously; he wanted his footing secure if the elemental, or anything else, was still there. He glanced back at his little brother, noting with approval that Sam was taking the same care with where he put his feet._

_Skirting the big sofa, he kept his imagination held down tightly as he saw that it'd been ripped to shreds, the floor covered with stuffing, like a fall of snow. He saw the dark red pool first, staining the floor and soaking into the tufts of stuffing and torn cloth, and stopped, holding his hand up to warn his brother. He took another cautious step forward and stopped again as he saw them. _

_A man and a woman, barely recognisable as human. Their bodies had been ripped apart, the flesh torn from the bones, the bones snapped into pieces. This was the first time he'd seen __the work __of an elemental, sometimes called a fetch; a creature created from the mind of a powerful psychic or witch. His father had explained a bit about them, but looking down at the bodies, he realised that nothing could have prepared him for this. He swallowed hard as his stomach roiled._

"_No, Sam. You don't want to see this." Dean kept himself between the bodies and his brother. "No one should have to see this," he muttered, half to himself._

_There was a soft noise to his left, and he spun around, his head snapping back to Sam. He lifted a finger to his lips, and Sam nodded, wide-eyed. Dean moved silently around the sofa, gesturing for Sam to take the other side, around what remained of the solid pine table._

_The noise came again, and Dean realised that it was coming from under a bookshelf, fallen from its position against the wall. Whatever was under there was not likely to be able to put up much of a fight, he decided, looking at the thin gap between the heavy shelving and the floor. He crouched at the edge, and put his hand under one side, testing the weight. It was heavy, too heavy to lift one handed. He'd have to put his gun down. He looked around for his brother. Sam stood on the other side of the shelf, gun held self-consciously in front of him._

"_I'll lift it – cover me," Dean whispered. Sam nodded and shifted his grip on the shotgun, lowering the barrel and easing his finger over the trigger. _

_Dean laid his gun silently __on the floor. He looked at the shelf, judging the central balance point. Then he slid his hands under the edge and, taking the weight with his legs, started to lift._

"_Ahhhhhhhhhh …"_

_He saw Sam's eyes widen dramatically, his brother's gaze flying to meet his, and he heaved, throwing the shelf back against the wall, catching it and stabilising it, then turning to look at what had been lying beneath its crushing weight. _

_Half buried under books, broken glass, papers and shattered china, a girl was lying on the floor, awkwardly twisted to one side. Dean dropped to his knees, picking up and throwing aside the contents of the shelf, trying to clear the debris from around and on top of the small figure._

_As he pulled a smashed picture frame away, he could see her face; one eye blackened and swollen shut, blood from a cut on her forehead sticking the long lashes together. The other eye was half-open, unfocussed, the bright jade of the iris flecked with gold, and ringed by dark blue, the pupil contracting suddenly in the strong beam of Sam's flashlight. The light picked up the gleam of glass in her skin and he took a breath, easing the slivers of glass from her forehead and cheek gently._

"_She dead?" Sam whispered._

_Dean shook his head, lifting the girl's head gently, his fingers lying lightly against the carotid artery at the side of her throat. A pulse beat strongly against his fingertips. He heard his father coming down the stairs._

"_Dad! There's a survivor."_

_John Winchester ran down the stairs, stopping when he saw the girl, her head cradled in his son's lap._

"_She's alive?" He moved forward carefully, kneeling when he reached them. "Turn her over, Dean."_

_As Dean very gently moved her shoulders, his father lifted the long tangle of hair, copper-coloured, dulled with blood, sweat and dust now. Dean saw the claw marks as his father drew away the remnants of the cotton nightshift. Four of them, wide and filled with dirt, they ran from the spine of the scapula diagonally across her back to just above the kidneys. He shivered. They were deep high on the back, but shallowed as they descended. The elemental had missed ripping out her spine by only millimetres. He looked at his father._

"_We'll have to clean this mess out. Sam, call 911, get an ambulance and the police."_

_The girl was no more than ten, younger than Sam, Dean thought, her body light and fragile in his hands. Dean eased her forward a little more, lifting her hair completely clear of the mess of her back, as his father pulled a small first aid kit from the satchel over his shoulder._

"_They're coming," Sam said quietly. John nodded._

"_Sammy, see if you can find clean water in the kitchen, and salt, and any alcohol." John turned to Dean as Sam turned and ran to the kitchen. "Is she conscious?"_

_Dean looked down. The side of her face that he could see was swollen, the eye forced shut. He couldn't tell if she was awake or not. "I think so."_

_John's face hardened. "You'll have to hold onto her, Dean, hold her tight, this is going to hurt." _

_Sam returned with a pan of water and a bottle of cooking brandy, stepping carefully through the detritus on the floor to hand them to his father. John tipped the bag of salt into the water, waiting for it dissolve and pulled out several thick gauze pads from the kit. Dipping the gauze into the saline solution, he soaked it and squeezed it out over the long cuts, irrigating the wounds, sluicing as much of the dirt from their interiors as he could._

_The girl gasped, and began to shake. Dean gripped her shoulders tightly, wishing suddenly he could take the pain, somehow, into himself. He felt as if they were torturing her._

_John glanced at him. "I know," he said heavily. "I feel the same way."_

_He turned back to the wounds, working fast to clean them out. "Sammy, get the dressings ready. As soon as I've finished this they have to go straight on."_

_Dean watched his father unscrew the cap on the bottle of brandy, and felt his stomach lurch. The salt solution was mild compared to the way the alcohol would bite into her. He swallowed, hoping she would pass out, it would be more merciful._

_When the first trickle of the brandy hit the open wounds, she arched back against his grip, her high-pitched childish scream shockingly loud in the silence of the wrecked cabin. Sam flinched, almost dropping the clean dressings, earning a dark look from his father. Dean closed his eyes, holding her still, her ten-year's old strength helpless against him; he was sixteen, his muscles trained and strengthened since childhood in the skills of their life. He felt tears forcing their way under his tightly closed lashes, felt his own body shaking with horror. He was relieved when her body suddenly fell limp, and he knew that she'd slipped from consciousness._

_He opened his eyes as his hands relaxed, watching his father as he cleaned the remaining alcohol from her back, and applied the dressings, taping them down. Despite the hardness of the expression on his father's face, he saw that his hands were gentle as he finished dressing the wounds._

_His father packed away the kit and slowly got to his feet. "Dean, can you lift her?"_

_Dean looked up and nodded. He was careful not to touch the wounds, and lifted her in a half-sitting position, her head rolling over his shoulder._

"_Here, on her side." John righted the armchair, spilling the debris from it, setting it down so that it faced the doorway. "Sammy, get a blanket from upstairs."_

_Dean leaned the girl against the side of the armchair, checking that she wasn't leaning on her injuries. The thin cotton nightshift had fallen away at the neck, and he could see a strawberry-coloured birthmark under her collarbone, in the shape of a crescent moon. Next to it was a small silver locket, the chain broken, the locket snagged on the nightgown's lace edging. He lifted it free, looking at the chain carefully. It wouldn't take more than a minute to fix it._

"_Give it to me," John said as Sam returned with a thick quilt. He laid the covering over the girl, tucking it against her sides._

"_Alright, let's go," he said, his gaze moving swiftly around the cabin and stopping on his oldest son. "We've got to get this thing before it can kill anyone else."_

"_Shouldn't we wait for the ambulance?" Dean looked at the girl, his brows drawing together as he realised his father meant to leave her there. "What if it comes back before they get here?"_

"_It won't," his father told him certainly. "But if we're here when the police get here, we're going to be questioned and detained and we'll lose the trail." _

_His expression was deadly serious as he continued, "This thing is only just getting started. We can't risk losing it now, or there'll be more families like this one." He glanced at the girl. "She'll be alright. It won't return here."_

_Dean saw Sam about to raise an objection, and shook his head quickly at his brother. Sam glared at Dean, but held his peace. They followed their father, picking their way carefully out through the mess. Dean turned back at the doorway. The police and the paramedics would see her as soon as they opened the door. He hoped his dad was right about the elemental. She was a sitting target if it did return._

_With the locket still in his hand, forgotten, he turned away, shutting the door and striding after his family._

Dean woke abruptly, fighting the tangle of bed linen to sit up, wiping the sweat from his face as he remembered. He didn't know how he'd forgotten about that hunt. About the girl. They'd found the psychic who'd raised the elementals, sending them out to kill, and killed her. That had taken them another week, travelling to a different state. After, Dean had gone back to the local hospital, wanting to know for himself that she'd survived. He'd fixed the chain, and he'd thought he'd be able to return the locket to her. But the hospital told him she'd been transferred to another city, taken away by an aunt who lived elsewhere. And ... life had gone on, different towns, different schools, new hunts … and he'd forgotten her.

Pushing aside the covers, he swung his legs out, feeling the thin carpet under his feet as he reached out in the semi-darkness for his duffle. He lifted it onto the bed, and searched by feel until he found the small leather pouch. It contained a few things that were sentimental or meaningful to him. His mother's charm bracelet. A couple of .22 casings from his first shooting lesson. A smooth flat stone with the delicately carbonised fossil of an ancient plant in it, picked up in the high desert when he'd learned to walk like a ghost. And the locket.

His fingertips found the smooth metal surface and he drew it out, closing the pouch and dropping it onto the bed beside him. In the next cot, Sam was sleeping, a faint whistling breath just audible under the heap of covers hiding him from view. Dean got up, walking out into the empty barroom and along to the bathroom and closing the door before he hit the light switch. Under the cool, harsh fluorescent light, he lifted the locket and turned it over, looking at the cursive engraving on the back.

_Finis vitae sed non Amoris._

He even knew what it said now; his brother had translated the Latin for him a couple of years ago.

_The end of life, but not of love._

It reminded him, in a way he wasn't sure he really got, of his mother, making him feel both sad and a little hopeful. Turning it back over to the smooth, unadorned front, he pressed the tiny clasp that lay along the rim with his nail. The two halves sprang open. Recessed in each side, a small photograph, of a man and a woman. The girl's parents, he'd guessed, the first time he'd seen the pictures. He lifted the locket closer to his face, angling it to the light. The woman in the photo had very similar features to the woman he'd met the previous night – the same oval face, high, wide cheekbones. The same wide, full mouth. The same large eyes, light-coloured irises framed in long, dark lashes. And long copper-red hair, drawn back from her face.

She'd lived, he thought. Gone to family, somewhere else. Safe, he'd thought. Out of it for good. Was it really likely that she'd turned into a hunter, drawn into a world of darkness that he and his father and his brother had tried to save her from?

Closing the locket, he looked down at it, lying in his palm. All he had to do was find her again. If it was even her.

* * *

A banging on the door of the small back room woke him the next morning, Ellen's voice muffled through the solid wood.

"Get your lazy butts up, boys."

Rubbing a hand over his face, Dean looked at his watch and swore. He turned his head to look over at his brother. Sam was lying on his back, eyes closed and mouth open, snoring softly and oblivious to the summons.

"Sam," he said, closing his eyes again and wondering why he'd thought it would be better to stay here than in some anonymous motel where check out was at least another four hours.

A soft and whistling snore answered him and he rolled onto his side, pushing himself upright on one arm.

"Sam," he tried again, a bit louder this time. He could hardly keep his eyes open, gazing blearily around the floor by the cot for his clothes. He saw his jeans, lying on the end of the bed and reached for them, glancing back at his brother.

"SAM!"

"Wha-!?" Sam sat up abruptly, eyes wide and hair sticking out in all directions as he looked wildly around. "What?!"|

"Time to get up," Dean told him unsympathetically, dragged his jeans on, standing to button the fly. "Ellen's got something on her mind."

* * *

The smell of coffee almost overlaid the deeply infused scents of alcohol, cigarettes and gun oil. They sat down at the bar, while Ellen poured them a couple of cups.

"You boys looking for a new job?" She set the coffee pot back on the warmer and turned around, leaning on the bar as she looked from one to the other.

"What kind of job?" Dean asked, looking warily at her over the rim of his cup. He wasn't sure that he did want a new case right now. What he wanted was to find the redhead and give her the locket back. Since he had no idea where she might've gone, or how to find her, it seemed like a futile idea.

"Demons, Ash says." Ellen leaned on the bar. "In Black Springs. He got wind of it last night."

"Demons?" Sam exchanged a look with his brother. "Plural?"

"That's what he says," Ellen said dryly, her gaze moved past them. "Ask him yourself."

"Demons, Ash?" Dean asked sceptically, turning to look over his shoulder at the roadhouse's resident genius. Ash looked like he'd spent the night sleeping on the pool table. Which, he reconsidered, he probably had.

"Dean. Sam." He leaned between the brothers to pick up the cup of coffee Ellen had poured for him. "That's what I heard. Town up north, there's a lot going on there."

"I checked it out," he continued, sucking down a mouthful of the strong, black brew and letting out a sigh of pleasure. Walking around the el of the bar, he sat down, both hands cradling the cup. "There're signs, omens around that place. Not like the ones that precede your dad's demon; they're not as powerful as that. I think they're trying to open something. No idea what. No records of a gate there, or anything else, least not that I can find. Doesn't mean there isn't one there, you understand," he added as an afterthought, picking up his cup again.

Sam felt a shiver run up his spine. "You ever heard of something like this before, Ash?"

"Nope." Ash drained his coffee and set the cup back on the bar. "No one has."

Dean looked over at him, wondering how much was on the level, how much was Ash's particular and peculiar sense of the dramatic. "What kind of signs, Ash?"

"Localised weather, storms forming outside of the weather patterns for the region. Some earth movements there, as well. Out of the ordinary, like, has the geology guys all het up. There've been a few disappearances in the county as well, not enough to flag the attention of the feds, but enough, with the rest, to confirm that what's going on up there, it ain't good."

Sam raked his fingers through his hair, pushing the forelock back off his face. "What kind of gate are you talking about, Ash?"

Ash looked at him steadily. "Gate to Hell, Sam. Gate to another plane."

"A gate to Hell?" Dean's eyebrows lifted. He definitely did not like the sound of that. "Are you talking about an actual doorway to a place?"

"Yeah, there're a few around." Ash scratched his cheek, the stubble along it of varying lengths. "How do you think the demons get here in the first place? Most of them are tiny, just cracks between the planes, really. But some are bigger. And a few are big enough to let the really powerful hellspawn through, as well as a sizeable chunk of the horde."

He looked from one to the other, seeing the disbelief in their expressions. "You boys not payin' attention to what's going on?"

Dean looked uneasily at his brother. "What the hell is the 'horde'?"

"Horde of Hell," Ellen supplied. "I keep forgettin' you boys got left out when John isolated himself from everyone."

She walked down the length of the bar, ducking to get under the hatch. "C'mon, you better see Bill's study."

Sam's brow wrinkled up as he slid from the stool and turned to follow her. Dean looked at Ash, who gave him a weary shrug and reached out for the coffee pot to pour himself another cup.

Through the door beside the bar, a short hall led past the kitchen to another corridor, this one longer, several doors in one wall. Ellen walked past the first and opened the second, stepping aside as the brothers walked in past her and looked around.

"Jim took a lot of Bill's books," she said, her gaze moving around the room. "Bobby Singer has a few as well, but the rest are here. He collected every bit of lore he could find on Hell and demonkind."

Sam moved to the shelves and tilted his head, reading through the titles. Most of the books were old, a few ancient, their bindings cracked and crumbling, the leather deteriorated by the passage of time and poor care.

Dean thought of what Jo'd said to them, the last time they'd been here. About her father. About his. He looked at Ellen and saw a warning in her eyes, not to speak of that, not to her. He looked back at the shelves and waved a hand at them.

"S'alright if we take a look?"

"That's why you're here," she said, nodding to him. "Take your time, I'll get some more coffee going."

* * *

It was almost dark when he looked up, hearing his brother slam the book he'd been reading closed.

"Think Dad knew about all this?" Sam asked, his tone bitter.

Dean sighed inwardly, closing the book in front of him and picking up the cold cup of coffee beside it.

"Yeah, I'd say so," he said, carefully neutral. "You think it would've helped us, any of this, with what we had to do?"

His brother scowled at him, looking away. "Maybe not with Yellow-Eyes," he allowed unwillingly. "But the background, Dean, we should know all of this, the gates and the omens – and – and all of it!"

"No argument," Dean told him. There was a lot, he'd come to realise, that their father had kept from them. Old buddies. Vampires. Mistakes. It made him uncomfortable to think of all that information that his father had been withholding. He'd thought … he'd thought his father had trusted him, and the only conclusion he could come to in light of the things that John hadn't shared with him, with them, was that he hadn't.

"I'm starving," he said, shunting his feelings aside. "We'll see what Ash has to say about the demons up north."

Sam nodded, pushing the books into a pile and getting to his feet. "If they're trying to open a gate, Dean," he said as he walked to the door, stopping and turning back to wait for his brother. "How the hell are we supposed to do anything about that?"

Dean shrugged. Ash'd said that they were trying. Sending them back to Hell would put a stop to it, at least.

* * *

Ash lowered his voice, looking around at the small crowd that had gradually filled the bar after dark. "Some of the hunters have been hearing things. They say that the demons are talking about a war, here, on our plane. I don't know if this job has anything to do with that, but the more gates that are opened, the more likely that gets."

Dean swallowed the last of his burger, wiping his mouth and pushing his plate aside. "A demon war?"

Ash lifted his beer, shrugging as he looked at the hunter. "Or a take-over?"

"A take-over?" Sam asked.

"What d'you think'll happen if enough demons get out?" Ash asked him in return. "Think they'll just head home once their own fight's over?"

He turned his head to look at Dean. "Your dad had a lotta notes on what a demon called Azazel was doing," he said. "You read 'em?"

Dean frowned. "Yeah, most of it," he said, glancing at Sam. "He'd been tracking it since '73, checking the towns."

"That demon was coming up every ten years or there 'bouts," Ash corrected him. "Looking for something."

"What?" Sam asked, his voice tense.

"Don't know," Ash said. "There wasn't a lot about that, just where it'd been – and how to figure out where it was goin' to be next."

"And?" Dean asked impatiently.

"And demons aren't exactly known for their planning ability," Ash told them. "More of a smash-an'-grab mentality."

Sam stiffened slightly. "That's what it said in one of Bill's books. So why the change?"

Ash shrugged again. "A power struggle? Sick of the status quo? I dunno. There's a lot more I haven't been through," he added. "I'll keep going through it, along with the records of the other special kids, whatever I can find on 'em."

"You do that," Dean said, hiding his frustration. "We'll be checking out the demon problem in Black Springs."

Ash nodded and Dean remembered what he'd wanted to ask him, before the demon war business had come up.

"You know a hunter called Ellie? Redhead?"

"Sure," Ash said. "She comes in here occasionally, but she's not, like, regular. Why?"

Sam was looking at him, he could feel his brother's curiosity beating softly at him. "Got a number for her?"

Ash shook his head. "Ask Ellen."

"Right."

He turned back to his beer as Ash walked back to the kitchen. Sam shifted on the seat beside him.

"And that was?"

"Nothing," Dean said. "You want to get going now or wait till morning?"

"Tomorrow," Sam decided. "I want to keep looking through those books. How long's the drive?"

Dean thought about it for a moment, tipping his bottle up and finishing his beer.

"Five-six hours," he said, thinking about the route. It would be quicker and easier to go the county roads.

Sam nodded. He could get a lot more covered by mid-morning tomorrow, and they could be in the town before dark, give them time to look around. He picked up his beer and finished it, getting up.

"You staying here?"

Dean looked around the bar and nodded, getting to his feet as he said, "Yeah, I want to check something out with Ellen."

Sam looked at him quizzically. "What, about that hunter?"

"About what she's heard the other hunters saying about demons," Dean said easily. He jerked his head toward the rear door leading to the back rooms. "Don't burn out your brain."

"Huh."

Not waiting for his brother to formulate another line of questioning, Dean walked around the corner of the bar, heading for the table that Ellen was wiping over.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

* * *

They came into Black Springs at twilight. The sun had just disappeared behind the ragged hills, but the wide sky was still painted in lurid shades of vermillion and gold, umber and rose, lighting up the high, wispy cirrus clouds that stretched out to the west.

Dean drove slowly down the main street, wondering what the hell he was supposed to be looking for.

It could have been any small town, the pavements wide, the traffic light, moving slowly, as they were. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary; people were walking, shopping, a harassed mother with a stroller and a toddler trailing behind glared at them briefly as he stopped for her and she hustled her family across the street.

"Doesn't look too bad," Sam said as he looked around. "If there're demons here, they're being inconspicuous."

"Yeah, that'll make them easy to find," Dean remarked sourly.

The drive had taken a little under six hours and he was hungry, and tired, and still uncertain about how they were going to take down the demons – plural – always assuming they could find them. "You see a motel anywhere?"

Sam peered out through the windshield, shading his eyes against the glare of the sunset sky on the store front windows. "Looks like one up there."

Dean nodded as he saw the flickering neon sign. The engine growled under the touch of his foot on the accelerator and he winced at the scrape of the exhaust on the cracked asphalt drive when he turned in.

Another roach-motel, he thought as he pulled up in front of the office, but it was cheap and they'd long ceased to be that fussy about their sleeping arrangements. He consoled himself with the knowledge that at least the queen-sized beds would give him more room than Ellen's military cots, signing the register in the fake name on his credit card with an impossible-to-replicate flourish.

They unloaded the car in silence, working together with the easy familiarity of long practice. The room was, as predicted, just a room, two beds, table, chairs, couch, kitchenette in the corner, bathroom on the other side. Looking around, he decided it was a bit cleaner than the last one.

Sam dumped his bags on the left-hand bed, pulling out the laptop and setting it up on the table. Dean locked the door, and drew the curtains, running a line of salt along the window ledges and across the threshold. From what his brother had been reading last night, it wouldn't do much against the more powerful demons, but it would keep the grunts out.

"What are you looking for?" He walked up behind his brother, looking over his shoulder at the screen.

"Ash said there were earth movements. I'm not sure that has anything to do with opening a gate, but it gives us a place to start, if I can find the epicentres." Sam's fingers flew across the keyboard.

"Here." He pointed to the screen as a map of the area loaded. "Look at where they all join up."

Dean leaned closer, eyes narrowing as he looked at the backlit local map. "Looks like a quarry."

"Yeah," Sam agreed, bringing up another search screen as he thought of something else. He started typing and after a moment, another map of the same area came up, this one with two thick lines crossing it, intersecting at the same quarry. "Now that's interesting."

"What?" Dean looked at the lines on the second map. "What are those?"

"Ley lines," Sam said, glancing at his brother's sceptical expression. "It's fairly established, theoretically at least. Lines of energy that cross the earth, channelling power and energy from point to point. Where they intersect, is known as a node – it's often the site of an ancient monument, or a place of special power. The science behind it's unproven, like most of the things we deal with." He turned back to the screen. "But the intersection here, I think that's meaningful. I think if there is a gate, that's exactly where it will be."

Dean straightened up, looking from the screen to his brother, his expression bemused. "You know, you get geekier by the day, dude."

Sam gave him a mocking shrug. "One of us has to know what we're dealing with."

"Hilarious." Dean walked back to the bed, unzipping the big duffle and pulling out a shotgun. "If that's the place, have you come up with a brilliant plan to deal with these demons? Not like we can go in with guns."

"No. Not really," Sam allowed with a quiet exhale. "We need more information. How many of them, where they're located. We can probably use ourselves as bait, draw them into a devil's trap, but that's going to depend on a lot of things."

"Yeah." Dean broke the gun, holding the barrel to the light as he checked it. "That's an understatement."

"You think we need help?" Sam looked at him. "Maybe call Bobby? Or Jeb?"

Dean thought about it, then shook his head. "No, we can do this; but we have to get a handle on what's here."

* * *

The closest place to eat was a bar with a grill. Dean's gaze scanned the place as they walked in, noting the layout, the exits, the traps and through-ways in the building. Booths lined one wall, tables of varying sizes filled the rest of the space. Two pool tables and a jukebox took up most of the other side of the wide room. The bar ran almost the entire length of the back wall, with a servery through one side and mirror-backed shelving down the rest.

The place was clean and the smells from the kitchen were good. They ordered their meal and a couple of beers and found an empty table in the rear corner. Sam hid a smile as his brother took the back corner of the table, giving him a hundred and eighty degree view of the place without it looking like he was looking around. Old habits died hard, and his father had always chosen that kind of seat, using anything and everything to be able to see every approach, no matter what the situation. He sat down in the chair opposite his brother, knowing he was partly screening Dean from the rest of the room. That was the idea.

"So, how are we going to be able to tell if some of these people are possessed?" Dean asked, tipping his bottle up and swallowing a mouthful as his gaze continued to move, more slowly now, paying attention to the individuals in the room.

"I don't know," Sam admitted. He leaned on his elbows on the table, his gaze flicking to the glass-covered print behind his brother. Through it, he could see most of the room as well. "They can look ordinary, like everyone else. We'd have to wait for them to do something … I don't know, out of the ordinary, demonic."

Dean snorted softly. "Right."

"We can check with EMF, that worked on the plane," Sam suggested. "Or you could walk around muttering 'Christo' under your breath."

"Wow, on a roll," Dean commented dryly. "You buying what Ash said about the gate? That demons can cross over to here through one?"

"Sure." Sam shrugged, looking his brother curiously. "Yeah, why not?"

"I don't know," Dean said. "Because if there are, why aren't there more?"

"Bobby said there were, more this year than he's ever heard of," Sam pointed out. "Maybe that's why. Something's opened the gates, some of them, the small ones?"

"What'd Ash say about how to open one? How the demons can open one?"

"He didn't, really. Said it wasn't his field of expertise," Sam told him with a half-smile. "Said that Bill was the expert. And Pastor Jim, according to Ellen. No one else knows much about how it all works."

"And they're both dead." Dean pulled in a deep breath. "Awesome."

"I brought a few of Bill's books with us," Sam said, lifting one shoulder in a shrug as he drank his beer. "One of 'em said that from the outside, the gate needs blood – a lot of blood."

"How much is 'a lot'?"

"Hundreds of people."

Dean's eyes narrowed as he looked back at his brother. "You're telling me that it needs a massacre? Of people?"

"Yeah," Sam said, making a face. "There's no info I could see about opening it from the inside."

"How the hell did Yellow-Eyes get out then?"

"I don't know. Maybe there's something in one of Dad's lockups? Files? More information?"

"Maybe." Dean looked away, not all that sure that he wanted to know all his father had known now.

His gaze travelled around the room slowly. The place was well-lit, but not overly bright, the overhead lights incandescent, giving the room a soft, golden glow. The bar area, with small tables and stools took up the centre. Around the walls, larger tables and chairs were filled with people, eating, drinking, talking. Behind the bar, two doors led to the kitchen; on the far side of the room, he could see the softly lit signs for the bathrooms and the rear exit, behind a couple of pool tables. The place was busy, but not crowded, and as he looked along the side of the room opposite to them, he could see the tables clearly. He looked at the table in far corner, and whistled slowly.

"I don't believe it," he said softly.

Turning around in his chair, Sam followed his brother's gaze. He saw the bright gleam of copper-red hair first, as the young woman bent her head over whatever she had on the table in front of her.

He glanced back at Dean. "You think she's hunting these demons too?"

Dean shook his head, his eyes fixed on the woman on the other side of the room. He'd wanted to find her again, but he hadn't thought they actually would. "I don't know. I guess so, no other reason to be here."

Sam studied his brother's expression. He couldn't recall seeing Dean so fixated on someone before.

"Dean, are you worried about her hunting here, or are you trying to figure out a way to hook up?"

Dean blinked as the words penetrated, turning to look at his brother. "What? No."

Sam raised an eyebrow sceptically. "You sure seem … interested in her."

Dean looked away. Seeing her again, after the dream; remembering that hunt, remembering the locket. It was like an omen, it made him feel both uneasy and as if something was about to happen. He couldn't shake off the memory, now that it had returned. And here she was. A hunter.

He reined in his thoughts. Well, it might not be her. Ten years was a long time. People changed. And between the ages of ten and twenty, most people changed beyond all recognition.

"Yeah, uh, no." He replayed what Sam had last said. "Well, Ellen and Jeb said she was the hunter who took out the bloodwraith. So it might not be such a bad idea to find out what her take is on this place."

Sam nodded slowly. "Okay, let's go and find out."

Their food arrived at that moment, the blonde waitress setting the plates in front of them with a wide smile. Dean looked down at his burger, packed with bacon, onions, dripping with a homemade barbeque sauce, the scent practically an aphrodisiac.

"We'll eat first," he decided, settling back into the chair.

Sam glanced at the glass on the wall, giving him an oblique view of the table across the room. "Better eat fast, looks like she's leaving."

Dean lifted his head, chewing fast. "Dammit, stay here."

He rose quickly, and walked towards the entrance, hoping to intercept her. But she was turning, and heading for the back exit instead. He hesitated mid-floor. Go out the front and around the back to meet her? Or follow her and hope that he could catch up? He didn't want to make a scene.

He turned to the front, and went outside, increasing his speed to a run as he rounded the building. He came around the rear corner, into a small parking lot. It was empty. He looked around, feeling his frustration rise.

There was no movement or sound in the lot. He walked slowly to the rear exit of the building, and tried to see where she might have gone. But the shadowy walls surrounding the lot gave too many possibilities. There were gaps between the buildings, no fence – she could have taken any one of them.

He heard the scrape of a shoe on the gravel behind him, and spun around, his hand automatically reaching for the handgun he usually carried in his jacket pocket – the gun that was sitting in the duffle beside his bed right now.

"Dean Winchester, isn't it?" The woman walking towards him was tall and curvaceous. Her long dark hair was loose over her shoulders, gleaming like a raven's wing in the light from the exit sign. Her expression was pleasant, he thought, until he looked into her eyes. He backed away slowly.

"Do I know you?"

"No, I don't think so. But I know you. I know all about you and your brother and your father." She blinked and he saw the flat black fill her eyes.

Dean felt a thread of fear tickle his nerves. A demon.

"What do you want?" he asked, his mind frantically going through his possible options.

She glanced behind him, and he turned to look over his shoulder, heart sinking as two men appeared from the shadows of the building behind him.

"Oh, we want you, Dean." She smiled at him. "We want you."

He moved sideways, fast, before they could outflank him. But the demons moved fast as well, closing in on him as they cut off his escape. Stopping under the pool of light from the streetlamp, he waited for them, balanced, ready. He had no weapon that would hurt them, no ritual of exorcism to get rid of them, no trap ready to fool them into entering. None of that mattered. When the options are reduced, the corresponding choices become clearer.

The first demon closed quickly, swinging at him. He deflected the blow easily with his forearm, and his fist shot out, connecting satisfyingly with the demon's nose. The second demon's fist swung at him, and he felt the breeze of its passing as he ducked, turning and sweeping his leg out, sending it to the ground.

"You'll have to do better than that," he said, pivoting slowly on the ball of his foot, keeping both demons in view.

The second time they came at him together. He used the weight of one against the other as his arm was grabbed, but his attention was too firmly on his opponents, and he didn't see the woman step in behind him, her arm rising, then falling as she brought the weighted cosh down on the back of his head.

He fell instantly, unconscious, not even aware of the snap of the thin leather around his neck as the demon's hand was caught in it and then threw it aside.

"Pick him up." The woman looked down at his sprawled body contemptuously. "He'll be bait for his brother."

* * *

Sam had finished his dinner. He glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes had passed since Dean had left. _Too long_, he thought. If Dean had found her, caught up with her, he would have called. He looked around the bar, feeling his anxiety rise. _Wait here? Or go looking?_

He looked down at the burger Dean had left. It was cold.

_Too long_.

He stood abruptly, throwing a couple of bills onto the table for the meal, and strode towards the rear exit. When he came out into the small parking lot, he paused, looking around. The place was still, quiet. A few cars were parked there, but he could see between them, see that the lot was empty of people. He walked slowly out into the lot, his eyes scanning the ground, trying to find something, some indication of where his brother was, what might have happened.

A small gleam of light from the ground beneath the street lamp caught his eye. He walked over to it, and looked down at the pendant that lay there, still attached to the black lacing that usually held it around Dean's neck. He crouched down, and picked it up, turning it over on his palm, noting that the lacing had been torn at the clasp, pulled off.

He stood slowly, his heart booming in his chest. His brother was gone, taken by someone, only Sam had a good idea about who.

_They knew us, Sammy_. Dean's voice replayed in his mind. _They knew about us, about Dad_. The Crossroads demon had known who Dean was when he'd summoned it.

Sam thought that maybe most of the demons knew who they were. Word apparently travelled fast among the hellspawn. And they'd known for a while where their father was.

He shook his head impatiently, swearing under his breath as he headed for the car. They'd walked into a trap, unprotected, unwittingly, with no idea that they were already marked.

* * *

Pulling into the slot in front of the room, Sam waited in the car for a few minutes. Nothing was moving in the motel's forecourt or the open lot and he got out, going to the rear and opening the trunk. A duffle lay on the false bottom of the trunk, heavy and awkward to carry and he hauled it out, locking the car then turning to the room door.

He'd brought a couple of dozen of Bill's books, and he dumped the bag on the table, pulling them out and stacking them up when the room was locked and the salt line replaced. There had to be a way to find his brother, find him and get him out of here, he thought, sitting down at the table and looking through the pile. Some way.

_It's inside me, I can feel it. You shoot me. You shoot me! You shoot me in the heart, son!_

Sam flinched back from the sudden memory, his face screwing up.

_Sam, don't you do it. Don't you do it._

_You shoot me, son! Shoot me! Son, I'm begging you! We can end this here and now! Sammy!_

He leaned his head against his hand, trying to shut out the voices of his family.

He still didn't know if he'd made the right choice, his father begging him to kill him and Dean, dying against the cabin wall, pleading with him not to. Maybe it could've been over then. Maybe it would've broken his family beyond any possibility of repair, an impossible wall between himself and his brother forever. He said it in the hospital; they were just starting to be brothers again, after the pain and division that had characterised his last year with them. He couldn't lose that.

His father had taken the matter into his own hands less than two weeks later, in any case, devastating both of them. He could see the cracks, where his brother had tried to plaster them over, fill them with killing and tracking and no time for thought and no room for feeling. He wasn't doing any better, he knew. He couldn't get it straight for himself, not the way he felt, not what he'd done – failed to do – none of it.

The Colt had disappeared the day his father had died, along with the knowledge they needed, the knowledge their father must have had of what had happened twenty-three years ago in an ordinary house in Lawrence, to an ordinary family.

His brother wouldn't talk about it. Dean would talk around it, over it, under it, but not about it. He knew he felt responsible for their father's choice, felt as if he'd killed their father himself, but aside from that one time, when the car had pulled over and he'd let out some of the misery that had filled him, he wouldn't discuss what had happened or why or what they could possibly do about it.

Getting up from the table, Sam walked to the room's tiny kitchenette, forcing himself to focus on making coffee, filling the pot's reservoir, spooning the grounds into the filter. He couldn't think of what _had_ happened now. He needed to concentrate on what _was_ happening, what _would_ happen if he didn't figure out a way to get his brother back.

_Hell isn't known for planning._

Ash had said it and the books from the roadhouse had verified it, to some extent, Sam thought as he listened to the gurgles and hisses from the pot on the counter. Children who had been visited by a demon, some of them losing their mothers in the same, horrific way. Psychic powers suddenly blooming in the same year. The demon's visits continuing, he realised, thinking of Amelia and her mother in Salvation. Someone had a plan. For him. For the others. For more innocents than they could ever hope to locate and warn.

For what?

_Normal year, I hear of, say, three demonic possessions. Maybe four, tops. This year I hear of twenty-seven, so far. You get what I'm saying? More and more demons are walking among us – a lot more._

The coffee pot gave a long hiss and Sam picked up a cup from the shelf, filling it absently as the memory of Bobby's warning drifted back to him. Why were the demon possessions increasing … now? What did it have to do with him and Max and Andy? Why had his family – and theirs – been chosen? Were the two things even connected?

The Yellow-Eyed demon hadn't been specific, he thought. _They got in the way_, it'd said. His mother and Jessica. Got in the way of … _My plans for you … you and all the children like you_.

But demons weren't all that big on planning. Or maybe some of them were.

Psychic humans. A war in Hell. A war on earth … maybe. A demon who'd been planning something for the last twenty-three years, minimum. Taking Dean to bait a trap for him. For what? It kept coming back to that. What did they want?

He looked at the books on the table as he carried cup back and sat down. There was too much they didn't know. If his father had known what Yellow-Eyes was doing, he'd taken it to his grave and they would never be able to find out now. Bobby was the first to admit that he wasn't in the league of Bill or Jim Murphy, not about the lore of Hell. He'd been trying to catch up, he'd said, the last time Sam had spoken to him, but for him, as for them, there was too much to read, to learn and no time.

Looking at his watch, Sam swallowed. Dean had been gone for eight hours. He didn't have the time to sit around and speculate on the bigger picture right now either. He needed answers and he needed them fast.

* * *

It was almost dawn when he leaned back, rubbing both hands over his face tiredly, the laptop's screen bright in the periphery of his vision, the text on the page in front of him blurring.

Hierarchies and histories, traps, spells, divinations and summonings … the details spun in dense vortices through his thoughts … names and powers and rituals and the far-too vivid descriptions of what happened to those who trafficked with demonkind without sufficient thought, preparation or will power to resist.

The books had a lot of information, most of it useful. None of it could help him with what he needed right now. Closing the cover of the one open in front of him, Sam pulled the computer closer, flicking past the search screens for the map he'd pulled up earlier. Something was happening out at the quarry, he thought. It would be a place to start.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

* * *

Lying on his stomach, just below the top of the ridge, Sam looked down into the gaping pit below. The quarry hadn't been mined for some time, but the raw cuts in the hillside were still open, uncovered by vegetation, the striations of the bedrock clearly visible in the dawn light.

The binoculars were heavy, high magnification; and he moved them slowly around, looking for any signs of activity, anything that might indicate that the demons had been here, had brought Dean here. He was careful to keep the lenses downward, so that no reflection would betray his location. In the pack that lay beside him, he had everything he could think of that he might need.

Nothing moved in the wide bowl of rock and gravel and sand, not even the wind stirred the dusty-looking leaves of the trees that clung to the edges of the open area. There were distinct tyre tracks, pressed into the soft ground along one edge, from the dirt road that led in off the highway, but they were old, he thought, focussing the lenses on the set he could see. The edges had been blurred by the ground getting wet and drying again, by the passage of animals back and forth across them. He couldn't see any sign that anyone had been here in the last few days.

There was no warning, no sound or change. One moment he was alone, his attention fixed on the ground below. The next, he wasn't.

"Have you seen anything?"

His head snapped around at a voice no louder than a whisper of breeze, close by his ear.

"Not a demon," the woman said, lying next to him, her hand light over his arm, bright green eyes, flecked with gold, staring into his.

Her face was covered in streaks of olive, beige and umber; bright hair hidden beneath a knitted cap of beige, the desert fatigues she wore blending in with the muted colours around them.

"Who the hell are you?" he demanded, his voice a deep rumble, as quiet as he could make it and still be audible. His pulse was slowing and behind the camouflaging outfit, he realised he was probably looking at the hunter his brother had wanted to talk to.

Her gaze shifted to look down at the quarry. "Not the best place to have a discussion. They were around here a lot last week. Come on."

She moved backwards silently, supporting the length of her body on her hands and the toes of her boots, slithering with remarkable speed and silence from the ridge-line and down the broken slope behind them.

Sam slid slowly backwards until he was below the ridge, then rolled onto his side, replacing the glasses in the pack and dragging it after him as he wriggled further down the slope.

In the little copse of stunted trees ten yards below, she was waiting for him, sitting so still on the log that he had trouble picking her out from the trees behind her. As he got closer, he realised that beneath the greasepaint and fatigues, she looked young, younger than he'd thought.

"I'm guessing you're Sam Winchester?" she asked, tilting her head to meet his gaze as he sat down beside her.

He looked at her suspiciously. "What do you know about us?"

"Not a lot," she told him, unoffended by his tone. "I used to know someone who knew your father. And the demons have been talking about you, lately."

Sam frowned, the two comments warring for priority. "You talk to demons?"

"They talk," she corrected him. "When they're in a trap and about to be sent back to the pit."

"I think they've got my brother," he said, catching his lip between his teeth as fear flickered through him, hastily dampened. "He disappeared last night."

"They won't be here," she said, glancing back to the ridge line. "They haven't been here since I got here yesterday morning. You saw the ley lines and the epicentres?"

He nodded. "We thought it might be a gate."

"There probably is one here, but they can't open it without drawing a lot more attention to the place and I'm getting the feeling that it wasn't the gate that they were interested in."

Sam's eyes narrowed as he registered her implication. "It was a trap – for us?"

"I've been in and out of this town a couple of times over the last month, since the omens started to show." She looked at him curiously. "You didn't know that you're known to the demons?"

Sam shook his head, his mouth twisting slightly. "Not until … well, until it was too late."

"Why would they take your brother?" she asked. "The demons mostly talk about you, not him."

A shiver ran up his spine. "What're they saying?"

"That they need to find you," she told him. "For something that's coming. They talk about hunters, specifically hunters by the name of Winchester. They talk about a war, here."

"Yeah, we heard that too," Sam hesitated, wondering what he could tell her, what it was safe to tell her. The earlier comment snagged at his attention. "You've been hunting demons? Alone?"

"One hides a lot easier than two," she answered, her tone light.

"Yeah." Sam bit his lip. "You think Dean's being held as bait, don't you? For me?"

"Probably," she said carefully.

Sam caught the inflexion. "Do you know where they've taken him?"

"There's a building, in town, supposed to be empty but I've seen lights there. It's down by the industrial park."

"Show me," Sam said, his voice hardening.

She looked at him, seeing his pulse beating rapidly in the big artery in his neck. "You can't rush in there, Sam. I know you're afraid for him, but if it's a trap for you, you won't spring it by giving them what they want. You need to handle your emotions, keep them under your control."

He swallowed, looking away. "I know."

She got to her feet and Sam rose as well. The top of her head was a couple of inches below his shoulders and she tilted her head back, holding out her hand.

"Ellie Morgan."

He took the hand she offered, hiding his surprise at the wiry strength of her grip. "Why are you helping me?"

She looked at him, the corner of her mouth lifting slightly. "Wouldn't you do the same if our positions were reversed?"

He dropped his gaze, knowing that they would have. "Yeah, I guess."

"If we go to look at this place, it'll just be a recce," she warned him. "That alright with you?"

"Yeah," he said. It seemed to satisfy her, he thought, watching as she turned and started walking down the hillside, staying under the trees, the dappled light further breaking her outline, making her harder to see.

Sam followed her, walking where she walked, keeping within the treeline.

* * *

The building was definitely occupied, Sam thought as he stopped the Impala in the visitor's parking space of the town's second motel. He glanced through the window to see the headlights of her truck turn off and got out.

They'd spent two hours watching the vacant building from the other side of the railway line, well out of sight of anyone who might've been looking, and had seen two men, coming and going, but no one else. He'd followed the slight woman across the tracks and down through the warren of buildings surrounding it when both men had left.

Crossing the lot, Sam wondered what the hunter had in mind. She'd seemed pleased when they'd left, a low hum of energy radiating from her.

He stopped in the doorway of her room, staring around with a disconcerting sense of déjà vu at the piles of books, notes, files stacked on the tables and the clippings, photographs and lines of string that covered one wall. It looked like any one of the rooms his father had been in for awhile, he thought, looking around.

"The building next door will give us the best view of the western side," Ellie said, glancing at him as he closed the door behind him. "If we go in tonight, we make sure there's only the two of them, and figure the best way to get in and out."

He nodded distractedly. "You think there's more?"

She paused in filling the coffee pot she held, heading ducking for a moment. "Yeah, I do. Not sure why, but I do."

Sam thought so as well. Two of them, even demons, would have had a hard time taking his brother without leaving something behind. But they had.

He walked to the wall of clippings, moving slowly along it as he studied the information pinned there. "Ellen tell you anything about us?" he asked, keeping his gaze on the news reports.

"No," Ellie said, carrying two cups of coffee to the table near the wall. "I asked Bobby Singer about you."

"You know Bobby?"

She nodded, gesturing to the opposite chair as she sat down. "A couple of years."

"What'd he tell you?" Sam sat in the chair and picked up the cup. It was black and strong, helping to keep his attention focussed.

"He told me you and your brother and your father were right in the middle of the war that the demons are talking about," she said bluntly, blowing over the surface of her coffee as she looked at him over the cup. "He didn't elaborate."

Sam looked down at the notes were stacked around him. He recognised a couple of the book titles, they'd been in Bill's study. "We don't know why, exactly," he said, glancing back up at her.

She'd scrubbed the camouflage makeup from her face before they'd headed downtown to look at the abandoned building, and in the still-early light, she looked no more than eighteen, hair pulled back from her face. Her eyes didn't, he realised, looking a bit more closely as she turned her gaze to the wall of clippings. Her eyes looked older. Like his brother's. The thought came as a surprise. In some ways, he felt years older than Dean. In others, he realised slowly, he was still just a little in awe of his big brother.

"I have, uh, visions, I guess you could call them," he said, not sure if it was a good idea to talk about it with someone he'd barely met. He needed to talk to someone about them and Dean didn't want to hear it. "They come true."

"Precognition?" Ellie asked, her lack of surprise refreshing.

"I don't know," Sam said. "They're connected with a group of people …" he trailed off, suddenly aware that he was about to enter a subject that his brother had told him repeatedly not to share with anyone else.

She didn't press him to continue, just sipped her coffee, waiting. He dragged in a deep breath.

"When I was an infant, something happened, to my family," he said, and his hands curled around his cup, the knuckles whitening slightly. "My mother was killed, by a demon."

"And the same thing happened to the people you're connected with?" Ellie asked, surprising him again with the leap. "You think it's a part of the connection?"

"I don't know," he told her honestly. "We've found people, like me. But not all of them lost their mothers." He shook his head. "They all have some kind of … ability –"

Ellie looked at him. "Some kind of psychic ability?"

He nodded, his face screwing up a little in surprise. "You don't seem all that freaked out by that."

"Should I be?" she asked, brows rising quizzically. "Psychic ability isn't exactly a new thing."

Sam let out the breath he didn't realise he'd been holding in, and shrugged. "Most people seem to be, uh, unnerved by it."

"What was the range of abilities? In you and the others?" Ellie asked, letting his comment go by.

"Um, I get visions," he said, thinking about the special children they'd met. "There was a guy, Max, he was telekinetic, but he killed himself. And three others, but only one's alive now, Andy, um, Gallagher. He can, uh, convince people of things just by telling them –"

"Mental domination?"

"I guess," Sam said, frowning. "The other two – one could electrocute people by thinking about it and touching them, I think. The other one was Andy's brother, he had the, um, mental domination thing as well."

"And you're the only one with a passive ability?" Ellie finished her coffee, getting up from the table.

Sam thought about the cupboard, the huge, heavy cupboard that had moved because he'd been desperate to get to his brother.

"Seems like," he said. "I had a – I don't know how to describe it – a moment, where I used telekinesis to move a cupboard, but I can't get it to happen again, it's like it –"

"Came when you needed it," Ellen finished his sentence, nodding. "You were upset or angry?"

"Both," Sam admitted. "You know about this crap?"

"Not much," she told him, going to the coffee pot and getting a refill. "I'm not psychic, but my – a friend was, in a couple of different ways," she added, returning to the table.

Her partner, Sam thought, remembering the conversation at the roadhouse and seeing her unwillingness to open up about it.

"It's not demonic, Sam," she said as she sat down again. "It's a normal part of human evolution, just got side-tracked by the way we went."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, in a hunter/gatherer society, where groups were separated by long distances, needed to know things that weren't easily found out through the five physical senses, or had little language development, a lot of people think that those abilities were more common, more, uh, in practise. Humanity started in an environment a lot harsher than the world is today, just weather-wise, I mean. Then we got an inter-glacial and we developed towns and agriculture and societies instead."

"Why would I have it?"

"I don't know," she said. "The demon who attacked your mother, what was it doing there?"

Sam shook his head. "We don't know. The house – there was a fire and there wasn't much left after it, and my father started hunting. Raised me and Dean to be hunters," he told her. Warriors, he'd said to Dean. Soldiers in a fight against things that most of the world didn't even know about.

"How'd you get started in this?" he asked, gesturing vaguely around the room. "You had to have started young?"

Ellie leaned back in the chair, both hands cradling the cup she held. "Pretty young, yeah. Bad luck, I think," she said. "I lost my parents and it never made sense to me and I started looking for answers."

"And you found them."

She smiled, her mouth turning down wryly. "Nearly died a couple of times before I found someone who knew what they were doing. I – I got lucky with that."

"What happened?" he asked, wondering if she'd talk about it.

"He died." Her face closed up as she looked down at her cup.

"Sorry."

"It was a couple of years ago," she said. Sam could hear the forced lightness in her voice.

"And now you're on your own?" he pressed, his forehead creasing up. "It's a good way to die young."

"Sure is," she agreed readily. "But it means no one else goes down with me."

She straightened in the chair and looked at him. "Eight weeks ago, I trapped a demon in Vermont," she said. "It said that Sam Winchester was going to lead an army from Hell."

Sam felt a frisson of fear trill up his spine at the words. "What the hell does that mean?"

"I was hoping you could tell me," Ellie said. "These other people, the ones with the abilities, what else do you have in common? Is there anything?"

"Our birth year," he told her reluctantly. "We were all born in '83. The demon attacks happened six months later."

There was a small crease, between her brows, as she stared at him. "Did your father find the demon?"

"Yeah, we found it last year," he said, feeling his throat close up with the memories. "It – it's a long story, but we – Dean and me – we think he made a deal with it."

"A deal for what?" Ellie asked.

"A deal to save Dean's life, in exchange for his own, and for a – a gun," Sam said, realising how long a story it really was.

He watched her face go a shade paler as she looked away, wondering if she'd known of that, or if some other memory had brought the reaction.

"What?"

She shook her head. "What do you know about the demon?"

"Not as much as we need to," he said. "It's got yellow eyes, not black like most demons – or red, like the crossroads demons. It's powerful. Powerful enough to ignore holy water and salt." He shrugged. "We've been looking, but we don't find many answers, mainly more questions."

"Sometimes, the question is the answer, if it's the right question," she said, somewhat cryptically, Sam thought. "Hell isn't exactly known for planning and organisation. More of a go-with-the-flow kind of deal for them."

Sam looked at her, wondering what she knew – or what she'd guessed. "That's what Ash said."

"The Fallen are supposed to have yellow eyes," she said, a little distractedly as she rubbed the heel of her hand against her forehead. "They're powerful, a lot more powerful than most demons."

"You think this isn't just some power play in Hell?" he asked.

"I don't know, Sam. That explanation just seems too easy to me." She looked around them. "We should get some sleep. Tonight's going to be busy."

"Why can't we go now?" He could feel the tension of knowing that his brother was being held by things that didn't give a damn if he lived or died building in him again. He didn't think he could just sleep.

"Because we're not ready now," she answered, her eyes narrowing slightly as she looked back at him. "Knowing it's a trap is one thing. Springing it is another. Tonight, we'll be rested, packing for grizzly and able to watch and see if it really is just two of them or if there's another one. You said you didn't think two could have taken your brother."

He nodded, running a hand through his hair in frustration. "I don't think I'm gonna get much rest sitting around all day," he told her.

"Burning yourself out won't help anyone. If you can't handle yourself, I'd rather do it alone."

"Well, that's honest." Sam sighed. "I'll try."

She looked at him for a moment, then nodded. "We'll go in around nine."

* * *

Dean stared at the woman in front of him, his jaw clenched as the blade sliced him again. He was suspended from the ceiling by his wrists, and most of his concentration was on keeping the agony of his shoulders and arms out of his head.

"What are you and your brother doing here, Dean?" She flicked her wrist, and the razor-sharp blade on the end of the fine rope open another small cut on his chest.

He dragged in a deep breath. "We're here for the cheese festival."

She smiled slowly. "Ah yes, the famous mouth of Dean Winchester. You know, you're quite admired in some of the lesser circles of Hell."

He stared at her tiredly. "Hellspawn fans … yeah, I'll pass."

The blade nicked his ribs and his teeth snapped together.

"No need for rudeness." She walked around him, looking at the sweat that mingled with the blood over his back. "What are you doing here?"

"We heard about the health spa, thought we'd check it out."

The edge of the blade scored his shoulder and he hissed with the pain.

"You know, we couldn't care less about you." She faced him, head tilted to one side. "It's your brother we want."

He lifted his head slowly. "You touch him and you'll be back in Hell so fast –"

She laughed, a loud, ringing peal of laughter that echoed from the hard walls and floor of the long room.

"You do have an inflated view of your own abilities."

She stepped close to him, dragging long sharp nails over the cuts that covered his stomach. "We'll be sure to let you live long enough to see him gutted, Dean."

He felt anger flood him, shunting the pain aside and swung his legs forward, almost catching her between them as she twisted away.

"Now, now, no going berserker before your time, Dean." She flicked her wrist again and he flinched as the blade sliced through the flesh under his collarbone, the small, bright pain bringing the agony of his body crashing back into him.

"We want you conscious and aware when it's time to peel the flesh back from Sam's body."

He let his head fall onto his chest, fighting against the pain that was riddling him. He didn't care about whether he lived or died, but he had to get clear, had to think of a way to save Sam. Had to think.

* * *

In the over-warm motel room, Sam moved restlessly on the bed, trying to force his thoughts into shutting down with a marked lack of success. He tried to steady his breathing, slow it, control it, only to find that against the darkness of his closed eyelids that brought more vivid images of what Dean might be going through. He tried to think of the past, lose himself in the memories of their shared childhood, but instead more recent memories surfaced, each one a question, demanding an answer.

_Dean, we are a family. I'd do anything for you. But things will never be the way they were before. I don't want them to be. I'm not gonna live this life forever. Dean, when this is all over, you're gonna have to let me go my own way._

He'd said it and meant it, knowing that his brother didn't want to hear it, knowing that it hurt, but unable to tell him anything different. He didn't want the life. He never had.

_Different now, though, wasn't it_, a snide voice piped up in his thoughts. _Different now that Dad was dead and there was all that time that had to be accounted for, all those things that you could've done, should've done, would've done if things hadn't been so screwed up._

Rolling onto his back, Sam stared at the ceiling. Things _were_ different now. The demon had taken everything but his brother and he couldn't leave. Wouldn't leave Dean to fight it alone.

He sat up, looking around the room in frustration. He could go to that building now, check it out, break in, find Dean and –

_- and _what_?_

If there were three demons there, would he fight them all himself? Get captured for his trouble? If Dean was just bait, would they even keep his brother alive if he got himself caught? Bait was usually expendable.

Slumping back against the pillows, he let out a long exhale. He couldn't risk Dean's life in a half-assed frontal attack without knowing exactly what was going on. It chafed at him, lying here, doing nothing, but there was nothing he could do except follow the plan. It was more annoying that he knew that he was burning himself out, with the emotions and the agitation and the restless need to do something, even something stupid.

Get your head together and relax, he told himself with a wry half-smile.

Jess had gotten into meditation shortly after they'd moved in together, claiming it was a miracle cure for de-stressing before and after exams. He'd had plenty of good reasons to believe in it, but he'd been sceptical, even so. He'd tried it once. The morning of his final. Alone, instead of giggling together over the symbols and positions she'd been trying to explain to him, he'd slid into a receptive and calm state quickly, the simple symbol – a triangle enclosed in a circle – charging him with energy at the same time he'd distantly recognised his pulse and respiration slowing down to barely perceptible levels. He'd aced the final and had remained steady and cool-headed the whole day. He hadn't told her that he'd done it, he remembered. He couldn't remember why not.

Calling that symbol into his mind's eye, he tried to focus on it, then felt the odd release as the symbol seemed take everything over, shutting out thought and feeling, worry and tension and filling him, calming him … tranquilising him, he thought vaguely, aware that his muscles were soft and loose, his pulse decelerating and steady, his chest rising and falling more and more slowly.

It wasn't sleep. It wasn't unconsciousness. It wasn't really consciousness, either. Something in between. Someplace where the body recharged and the mind rested and both waited patiently.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

* * *

The night was clear but moonless, a factor that worked in their favour, Ellie thought, looking at the depth of black in the shadows on the roof. Demons saw people differently, Michael had told her. Even in a vessel, through the vessel's eyes, they saw more of the soul that lay within, able to recognise people by that vision, no matter what disguised the outer appearance.

Before they'd left her motel room, she'd painted the sigil that her dead partner had taught her, high on their chests, over the sternum and below the throat. The design was supposedly of angelic origin, Michael had told her, and to a demon, it blocked the unique identity of each soul. If it could hide the part of Sam Winchester that the hellspawn recognised, she would be well and truly satisfied, she'd thought, finishing the symbol and stepping back. Painted in animal blood, the acrid reek subtle but there, and Sam's nose had wrinkled up a little as he'd pulled his tee shirt collar back up, hiding it from view. He looked no different to her, but hopefully he was invisible as himself to the creatures they would be hunting.

That had been two hours ago. She and Sam sat on the rooftop of the building; both dressed in black now, blending into the shadows and waiting. Across the alleyway, the vacant building opposite was in darkness, except for one room. That was lit, candles and lanterns throwing shadows as the possessed man and woman moved around in it. There'd been a third, earlier, but he'd disappeared an hour ago and they hadn't seen him since.

Sam's breath hissed out as he looked through the binoculars into the room. His brother had been hung between two chains, suspended from the ceiling. Stripped to the waist, blood dripping to the floor from the many cuts that patterned his chest and back and shoulders, Dean's head hung low, his cheek resting against his shoulder. Sam hoped that he was unconscious, but as he watched, Dean's head rose slowly, the shadowed eyes opening, looking at the woman who approached him.

Sam thrust the binoculars into his pack, muscles bunched with tension under his clothes. "Let's go, what are we waiting for?"

Ellie looked at him patiently. "We're waiting for the opportune moment, Sam. We know there are at least two of them in there. What happened to number three? Do you have a plan, or were you just going to run in, and hope that they don't kill you before you get to the room?"

Sam looked away. "It works when Dean does it," he muttered mutinously.

She smiled suddenly. "Maybe, for him. But not for us. This is a trap for you, Sam. We're not risking giving them what they want."

She looked at the width of the alley. The building that the demons were using was lower than the one they were on. They could look down into the room. The missing third demon was worrying her. Guarding the entrances? Or on other errands? Something else they were here to do? She didn't know. But they had to find out before they made a move. A detail on the roof of the building caught her eye. She considered it for a long moment, cautiously pleased as it fit in with the tentative outline she had.

Taking the binoculars from Sam's pack, she moved slowly to the parapet, all too aware that movement could be picked up far more easily by a watcher than even sitting out in the open. Shielding the lenses with one hand, she scanned over the building, inch by inch, looking for movement, for a difference in the shades of grey and black in the shadows, for a gleam on a button, or on hair, for anything that would indicate the presence and whereabouts of the third demon. She was distantly aware of the tension radiating from the man beside her, and she made an effort to shut it out completely. His fears were understandable but of no use to either of them and it'd been the first thing Michael had taught her, to close off everything that wasn't going to be useful, that could take energy for no return.

Sam sat against the wall beside her, his jaw clenched as he fought with his imagination over relinquishing the memory of seeing his brother being tortured in front of him. She was right, he thought. He couldn't go rushing in, not when that was what they wanted, what they were expecting. He wasn't sure what she had in mind, but he had to get his emotions back under control.

He heard Ellie's soft exhale and turned his head.

"Found him," her voice, low almost to the point of being sub-vocal, held a note of satisfaction. The glasses continued to move incrementally over the building, finally returning to the room. She looked at the windows that faced the alley, at what she could see of the interior, the position of the doors, of the windows on the other face of the building. Finally, she lowered the binoculars and handed them to Sam.

"We'll need to take out the guard first," she said, moving slowly to lean over the parapet and peer over the edge. Six stories below, a door in the side of the demon's building led into the narrow alley. "That will do."

Sliding back below the level of the parapet, she turned to him. "Can you draw a devil's trap?"

Sam nodded. "We've used them before."

"Good. Come on."

Crouching low, they moved off the roof to the stairs. At the bottom of the stairwell, their gear bags were waiting, they sat on the stairs next to them, checking over their equipment as she laid out the idea she'd had.

"Can we get the timing that close?" he asked, when he'd thought through what she'd told him.

"Within a few seconds, yes," Ellie confirmed, pulling a coil of rope from her bag and slinging it over one shoulder.

"Can you make that jump?" Sam thought about the alley. It was a long way across. And a long way down.

In the last couple of hours, he'd seen her working, seen the methodical approach she'd taken to everything. It'd been reassuring, he thought to himself. Her confidence in what she did had a knock-on effect, making him feel more confident about getting Dean out without any of them dying.

She glanced up at him, smiling at the concern in his face. "With the drop between the two buildings, yeah, it won't be a problem."

He watched her tuck her gun into the modified shoulder-holster under her jacket, listening as she continued, "The main thing we need is the shock. And two separate lines of attack."

Thinking of the way it would go down, if everything went the way it was planned, Sam agreed. Shock and the way it could freeze people, even demonic entities, was an under-utilised weapon. His brother had a good instinctive understanding of those kinds of tactics, he thought. Dean couldn't have articulated how he knew what he was doing with those decisions, but he knew on a gut level they'd work.

He stood up as Ellie got to her feet and passed him the gloss black spray can, wondering what his brother would make of her.

* * *

At the corner of the alley, Sam waited for a long time in the shadows. He watched, forcing his mind to be quiet and still, forcing his senses to extend as far as he could – observing, listening. When he was sure that the guard wasn't present on this side of the building, he moved along the wall of the alley, remaining in the darkness of the building's shadow. He stopped opposite the side door they'd seen from above and waited again, breathing deeply to relax the muscles surrounding his chest, feeling his pulse steady. He would be exposed for some minutes, in drawing the trap. He wanted to be damned sure that he would have that time.

Nothing moved behind the dark windows; no sound broke the silence of the alley. Even the wind had stilled, and he felt certain that he was alone.

Stepping out of the shadows, he walked silently across the asphalt to the narrow raised kerb in front of the side door, stopping just before he reached it. He'd practised the sigils and designs of the traps in Bobby's copy of the Key of Solomon for weeks, committing them to memory, training his hand to draw a perfect circle, to know the angles between the lines to within a second of the degree, and he worked quickly, using the aerosol can of paint confidently and accurately, aware that the hiss of the paint could mask other noises. It wasn't loud but it was a persistent noise and along with the rattle of the bead inside the can, it seemed to shout out his presence there.

It took him two minutes to draw it out. The paint was already drying, the glossy black becoming matt, becoming invisible on the black asphalt of the road. He stepped back and checked his watch, pushing the empty can into the deep pocket of his coat. He had another minute to wait.

* * *

Inside the demon's building, Ellie moved silently back down the stairs. Sneaking in hadn't been as much of a problem as she'd feared. The sole demon on the lower levels had been easy to pinpoint once she'd gotten into the basement. It was uncaring of being heard, confident that no one would be getting in without its notice.

At the last landing, she stopped, glancing at her watch. Almost time. A shadow passed in front of her, and she froze in place, holding her breath as she watched the demon cross the corridor below her and go into a room on the other side. The single loud bang on the door to the alley was muffled to her, but the demon shot out of the room and ran down to the door, barely checking as he unlocked it and flung it open.

* * *

In the alley, Sam backed away, empty hands spread out to either side, his gaze fixed firmly on the demon's face. The demon looked at him, the menacing expression changing slowly to astonishment and then delight as it laughed.

"Too easy," it sneered, stepping out through the door. "You boys have a reputation that exceeds your capabilities."

Sam made no response, and kept his eyes on the demon's face. He stopped moving as the demon stepped into the trap. Then he smiled.

Ellie came out through the side door at the same time, one hand dipping into her coat pocket and pulling out a small book, the cover wrinkled leather, the pages gilt-edged. The demon spun around at the sound of her boot on the tar, its eyes widening.

"You …" it started to say. Opening the small book, the pages fell open to the Roman ritual at the back and she started to read, her voice a little deeper than normal.

_"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio, infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica …"_

"NO!" the demon hissed. "Not possible, you are no Authority of God. You have no power!"

Sam watched her ignore it, reading steadily. He felt his pulse leap as her voice gained power, the Latin flowing and somehow commanding, ringing out in the closed alley.

"_Ergo draco maledicte et omnis legio diabolica adjuramus te. Cessa decipere humanas creaturas, eisque aeternae Perditionis venenum propinare …"_

Sam watched, his eyes narrowed. The demon was sweating, cursing, its eyes rolled back in its head as the words of the ritual rose around it, a cage of invisible power. He remembered how shocked he'd been when he'd exorcised the demon from Meg Masters, remembered the violence of its struggles to remain in the woman, clinging on and throwing her around as the ritual had severed its connections, one by one.

He looked at Ellie's face, and he wondered about the man who'd trained her, wondered how much of her calm focus was due to that training, and how much was just her, the way she was, the way she handled herself. She paid no attention to the furious shrieks and convulsions of the demon caught in the trap in front of her, her face taut with concentration but otherwise expressionless.

"_Ab insidiis diaboli, libera nos, Domine. Ut Ecclesiam tuam secura tibi facias libertate servire te rogamus, audi nos. Ut inimicos sanctae Ecclesiae humiliare digneris, te rogamus, audi nos."_

The demon started to rise off the ground, the vessel's body twisting impossibly.  
_  
"Terribilis Deus de sanctuario suo. Deus Israhel ipse truderit virtutem et fortitudinem plebi Suae," _Ellie continued, her eyes half-closed, her face taut with strain.

"Kill you, kill you all!" it gasped, and Sam winced as the body arched back, the back of the head almost touching its heels.

"_Benedictus deus. Gloria patri," _she said, crossing herself.

It stilled for a moment, then the demon exited the body, the thick charcoal smoke pouring out and dissipating in the still air above the trap.

The human victim fell and collapsed on the ground. Ellie closed the book and slipped it back into the pocket of her jacket, stepping into the trap and crouching beside the man. Contusions and bruising were already rising on the victim's skin.

"Is he alive?" Sam asked, stepping closer to the trap.

She looked up, her fingers light on the man's neck, feeling for a pulse. Nodding to Sam as she found it, she got to her feet.

"He'll be alright." She looked up at the building beside her. "Ready for the next bit?"

"Yeah. How long do you need?"

Ellie looked at her watch. "Two minutes. You need to come in before then, about ninety seconds."

"Okay, I'll be there." He walked past her through the side door, and headed for the stairs.

* * *

Ellie turned and ran down the alley, turning right and back into the next building. She was counting off the seconds in her mind, taking the stairs two and three at a time. She came out on to the roof at eighty seconds, accelerating hard as she ran towards the parapet. At four feet from the edge she took an extra long stride, leaping to the top of the low wall, and then with the impetus of her speed, she jumped.

The alley below was about eighteen feet wide. With the advantage of the height difference, she made the opposite roof with a foot to spare. Landing forward, rolling to absorb the impact, she sprang to her feet, her gaze snapping around.

_There_.

The iron brackets had been embedded in the concrete of the roof. She lifted the coil of rope from her shoulder and caught up the free end, tying a bowline around the upright. Flipping the coil over and picking up the remaining free end, she turned to the edge of the roof, lining it up with the taller building on the opposite side of the alley for the precise location of the window they'd seen Sam's brother through.

* * *

Sam hadn't even bothered trying the knob; every bit of his two hundred pound weight was behind his foot as it slammed into the door, next to the lock. The door smashed inwards, the lock flying free and he charged into the room, taking in the location of the two demons inside with one sweeping glance.

* * *

The countdown in Ellie's mind reached ninety, and she heard a crash. She took a deep breath and ran to the edge of the roof, her hands tightening her grip on the rope as she leapt out off the roof's edge. The rope had paid out behind her as she sailed out over the alley, snapping taut as it reached the end and her fall was abruptly arrested. Every muscle tightened as she reached the end of the swing and the centrifugal force propelled her back towards the building's side.

_One hundred and nineteen, one hundred and twenty, one hundred and twenty one …_ her booted feet hit the window, the glass exploding inwards, the frame shattering and sending broken pieces of timber flying across the room. She released the rope and rolled forward, hearing the steady booms of Sam's shotgun as she gained her feet and took a single long stride to reach the table behind the man hanging from the ceiling joists. Jumping onto it, the lighter was in her hand, the flame licking at the sprinkler above her.

The sprinklers came on.

Sam reloaded as the demon in front of him flinched and shrieked when the blessed water hit its skin. He cocked the gun, sending another salt round into its side, swinging the barrels around and firing at the woman whose long, dark hair was falling from her burning scalp in clumps. Both demons were saturated with in seconds, their skin bubbling at first, then beginning to slough away as the water continued to flow. Sam's attention flicked back to the demon he faced, blocking its path to the door when it dodged to one side.

"No! Not getting out of here," he snarled, his elbow flashing out, slamming into the demon's jaw.

Ellie pocketed her lighter, jumping down from the table as the demon woman swung back toward her, face twisted in an expression of rage. She saw it draw a long knife and run toward Dean, its intention clear enough. Dropping to the floor, her foot sliding out a little on the wet vinyl, Ellie's leg scythed out, striking the demon's leg at the side of the knee as the clumsy swing of the knife passed over her head. The vessel went down with a high-pitched scream of fury, rolling over and scrambling onto her hands and knees, her once-beautiful face blackening and falling apart as she lunging for the hunter.

Watching her, Ellie's eyes narrowed as she took in the woman's speed and balance, the way she held the knife. After so many fights, the details were filed automatically, needing no thought process to assess her attacker. The demon stabbed at her as it closed in, and she swayed her body slightly, letting the knife pass her by an inch, her hands closing hard on the vessel's wrist. She yanked on the arm in her grip, shifting her weight over the fulcrum of one hip, adding the momentum of her weight as the heel of her hand hammered into the demon's face.

The demon staggered back, dropping the knife, and Ellie picked it up. She was surprised to see the demon back away, its bruised and bloodied eyes fixed on the knife. Ellie advanced on her, blocking the way to the door and the demon kept backing, slipping on the wet floor, the rage gone and fear replacing it as she stared at the knife.

Behind her, from the other side of the room, Ellie heard a crash and a grunt, and she risked a swift glance over her shoulder. The other demon had pinned Sam against the corner of the ceiling, his arm bent the wrong way and the shotgun falling with a clatter to the floor. The demon was bleeding, its skin dropping off in patches as it advanced to the corner and shoved Sam harder into the plaster.

Looking back at the demon in front of her, backed up to the wall, she reversed the knife in her hand, throwing it with a sharp flick of her wrist underhand. The blade buried itself to the hilt, just under the rib cage, and Ellie watched, her mouth dropping open in surprise, as beneath the human skin of the demon's vessel, a molten red and gold light suddenly boiled, illuminating the skeleton like a demonic x-ray. The demon dropped to the floor, a glowing pool of charred ash surrounding the woman's body.

She stepped forward and dragged the knife from the body, pivoting in the same motion and running toward the remaining demon, her boot soles sliding out over the slick wet floor. Focussed on Sam, it didn't hear her come up behind it until the last moment, and she lunged forward as it began to turn, catching one shoulder with her hand and using it as a brace as she drove the knife into its back beneath the ribs, the blade angled up to pierce the heart.

She let go, turning her head away and narrowing her eyes as the same process of boiling livid light turned the demon in front of her into a gruesome lava lamp, lighting up the entire side of the room before the glow burned out and the demon sagged forward. It slid off the knife's long blade and crumpled at her feet.

Sam fell from the ceiling, a wheezing grunt forced out as he hit the floor. He rolled onto his side, his face screwing up as the shoulder joint tore a little more with the impact.

Crouching beside him, Ellie looked at the loosely swinging arm by his side. "Dislocated."

"Yeah," Sam agreed tersely. He turned his head to look at the dead man lying nearby. "What the hell was that?"

"Got me," she said, one shoulder lifting in a quick shrug. "Very handy, though. Sam, I have to push that back."

Sam grimaced as pain sheeted over him from his arm. He pushed himself one-handed to his knees. "I'll live … get Dean down first."

She shook her head. "I'll need your help for that." Moving around him, she took his wrist and elbow in her hands.

He closed his eyes as she brought the arm in close to his chest and pulled it out again, the muscles and tendons stretching agonisingly as the joint hovered on the edge of the socket. He felt her sharp push, her hand forcing the joint with her weight behind it and the pain dissolved into a general ache as the ball slid back into place, leaving him with a cold sheen of perspiration over his body and the memory of the pain fading slowly.

"Okay?"

He opened his eyes and nodded, moving his arm cautiously. "Yeah, it's back."

Ellie nodded and got to her feet, holding out her hand and bracing herself as Sam took it in his left and let her pull him upright. His fingers tingled as he worked them, trying to get more use back into his right arm. He followed her across the mist-filled room to his brother.

Eyeing the chains for a moment, Sam gestured to the table. "If you get that under him, it should take the load off his arms and the shackles."

She nodded agreement, pushing the table over to Dean. Sam saw his brother lift his head slowly as he felt the table against the backs of his legs. He tried not to see the cuts and gouges that seemed to cover Dean's body from the waist up.

"Ellie, he's coming to."

* * *

Dean felt hands on his calves, then under his feet as they were gripped and his legs pushed up. Under the bare soles of his feet, he felt the smooth, solid surface of the table and he straightened slowly, the effort taking his weight from his arms and shoulders. The horrendous strain on the muscles and joints vanished, only to be replaced by the pain it'd masked for the past twenty-four hours, the sharp bite of the flesh mangled by the shackles around his wrists, the deep, throbbing ache of bruised and torn muscle and skin. His nervous system reported it all faithfully and he sucked in a breath through closed teeth, trying to ignore the inventory.

It took him a few minutes to realise he couldn't open one eye because the swelling over the socket was keeping it shut, a few minutes more to be able to force the other eye open to a slit. He felt movement behind him, heard the faint rasp of the pins to the shackles holding his wrists s they were undone.

When his arms were allowed to drop, he grunted at the fresh flux of pain that hit him. His vision greyed at the edges and he swayed on the table, hearing a quiet swearing behind him as a pair of arms wrapped around his hips and stopped him falling forward.

"Sam! Can you take him?" the voice behind him said, and Dean forced his mostly-closed eye to focus, making out a blurred outline of his brother stepping close to the side of the table in front of him.

"Sammy?" he croaked, swallowing at the dryness of his throat.

"Yeah, man, I'm here," Sam said quietly, his voice recognisable even if he couldn't see his face. "Ellie, you can let him go. I got you, Dean. I got you."

He felt the arms around him let go and tried to keep his balance as Sam took a step back, but there was nothing but air under his feet and he heard his little brother's hiss as he was caught, his knees buckling when his feet touched the ground.

"You got him?"

"Yeah, mostly," Sam grunted, shifting the position of his arm around Dean's ribs, feeling the slickness of his brother's blood soaking into his shirt sleeve. "Use a little help."

Dean heard the thump behind him and felt another arm go around him, much smaller than his brother's, his confusion at that realisation drowned out as his arm was lifted again and the muscles screamed at him.

"Sorry." The voice wasn't familiar but he'd heard it before, he thought, turning his head toward the voice and trying to see who was holding him up.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked, hearing the words come out slurred and mushy as he tried to hold onto his consciousness.

"A friend," Sam answered, his breath whistling out tightly as he took a step forward. "We really need to go – now."

* * *

It took them almost fifteen minutes to get down the stairs and through the alley, Dean losing consciousness after the first few steps. Sam felt the aches and pains of the fight stiffening him up as he tried to keep a tight grip around his brother's ribs, hearing the soft panting from the other side of Dean.

"You okay?" he asked Ellie, stopping as they reached the last landing and holding Dean up as he leaned against the balustrade to catch his breath.

"Yeah," Ellie said, straightening a little and pushing back at a stray strand of hair that'd escaped from the long braid. "Do you want to get the car, bring it into the alley?"

He nodded, then looked at his brother. "You better do it," he said, digging into his jean pocket for the keys. "If he collapses on you, you'll never get him on his feet again."

She caught the keys he threw to her and waited for Sam to rearrange himself into a better position to hold Dean up, turning and running down the stairs for the alley door when he indicated he was stable.

In his arms, his brother was sagging, and in the dim light from the street, Sam saw the bruises and smeared blood as black, making Dean's skin look corroded and pitted.

"You still with me, man?" he asked softly.

Dean made a small noise in his throat and Sam shifted his grip again, trying to support them both against the banister.

"Wh're-we?" Dean mumbled indistinctly.

"Getting out, Dean," Sam told him. "Just a bit longer, we'll be in the car and somewhere safe."

His brother exhaled against the side of his neck, and Sam wondered if Dean felt the same doubt he did about that. Was there anywhere at all that was going to be safe for them now?


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

* * *

Dean lay on the bed in the motel room. His wounds had been cleaned and dressed. The swelling was slowly receding, packs of frozen vegetables and wrapped bundles of crushed ice covering half his face, wrapped around his wrists, resting on his shoulders where the muscles had been most abused. Sam sat on the bed opposite, his arm in a sling, the bruising coming in a dark rainbow over his arm and chest. The side of his face was reddened, skin missing but otherwise, he wasn't in too bad shape.

"They knew who we were from the moment we came into town, didn't they?" Dean asked. The swelling had gone down a little on the eye that still worked, and someone had cleaned the blood from the lashes, making it possible to open it most of the way.

Sam nodded gingerly. His head still hurt, the painkillers slow to kick in. Dean had passed out again in the car, something he'd been grateful for when he and Ellie had gotten him into the room and seen the full extent of the damage done. He hadn't been able to shut down his feelings well enough and after a minute of dabbing at the mess of one of Dean's wrists, Ellie had told him to sit down and look after himself, taking care of his brother with a matter-of-fact lack of fuss.

When his brother had woken an hour ago, he'd told him some of what had happened, while Ellie had gone out to get the frozen packs and ice from the motel cooler. Dean had listened, his face expressionless under the spreading bruises, giving only a very brief description of his time with the demons. Sam'd seen the muscle at the point of his brother's jaw jump once, when he'd told him what Ellie had said about the visions and the psychic abilities. It was a sore point with him, Sam knew. An unknown that made him nervous.

"So from now on, we have to be more careful." Dean turned his head slowly toward Sam.

"We need something to hide us, something like these …" Sam touched the dried blood drawing that sat between his collarbone and the pectoral muscle.

"You need proper protection, both of you," Ellie's voice came acerbically from the bathroom, the door partly open as she shed her water-and-blood soaked clothes and scrubbed the blood from her face and body.

Sam lay back on his bed, closing his eyes. "I guess so."

Turning his head to look at his brother, he caught a glimpse of her, reflected in the mirror through the open bathroom door in the periphery of his vision. He shifted carefully on the bed a little further, focussing as his view improved. She stood straight, wearing only a black bra and pants, three-quarters turned from him. His gaze locked onto the curve of her back. The smooth, pale skin was marred by four wide white scars, running from the top of the shoulder-blade diagonally across her back, tapering off just above the kidney.

His eyes closed as the old memory returned. The dirt-filled wounds and her scream ringing in his ears. His father's drawn expression and the relief he knew they'd both felt when she'd passed out.

And the brief flicker of shame as they'd left her there, alone and unprotected for the cops and the medics to deal with.

It had been the right decision, he'd told himself. Maybe it even had been. But he hadn't been able to rid himself of that feeling for a while after that job. And he'd seen his father differently. Not a lot differently, just a little. It had changed something between them, he thought.

* * *

Ellie pulled on a clean denim shirt, buttoning it up. She pulled fresh jeans from her pack, dragging them on, and took out clean, dry socks, wriggling her toes into them and bending to pull on her boots. The chill from the soaking was dissipating and she turned to the mirror, loosening her hair from the tight, flat coronet plait she habitually used to keep it out of the way when she was working, her thoughts circling around the question that had been nagging at her since Sam had told her about the visions. She wondered if either of the men in the other room had had the time to work out why the psychic abilities had been a part of the demon's plans.

As she brushed the long strands out, she heard the tiny tinkles of bits of glass falling from it onto the tiled floor. _Fabulous_, she thought, shaking it out harder. She could shower later, she decided, somewhere down the road. Putting the brush into her backpack, she picked up her wet clothes and hung them over the shower rail, fingers automatically re-braiding her hair into a single plait as she walked out of the bathroom.

She stopped a couple of steps into the room, looking from one bed to the other. The Winchester boys – men, she corrected herself – in the flesh. She'd told Sam the truth. She didn't know that much about them. Michael had talked of their father, John Winchester, on a few occasions, a meeting he'd had with the man years before. In the roadhouse, the times she'd been there to talk to Ellen or to Ash, she'd heard a little about the brothers. They were regarded highly by the hunters that knew of them, some of whom had worked with Dean or his father. Sam was less known, he'd been out of the life for some time had been the rumour she'd heard.

They did need protection. It'd been obvious from what Sam had said that they'd had no idea how widely spread and well-known their family name was, especially to those who wanted them dead. Most hunters weren't, she knew. Well-known to the inhabitants of the other planes. The ones who were generally knew about it and took appropriate precautions, simply to survive.

She walked over to Dean's bed, bending over him and lifting the pack of vegetables on his right shoulder to look at the extensive bruising under it. It would be a few days before he could use either arm without pain, she thought, replacing the pack carefully. She had stronger painkillers in her pack than the ones she'd given his brother.

* * *

Dean opened one eye to find Ellie leaning over him, her hands gentle as she resettled the cold pack over his shoulder. The neck of her shirt gaped slightly and he looked along the delicate line of her collarbone. It was there, a small strawberry-coloured birthmark, in the shape of a crescent moon, easily visible against her skin.

She straightened and looked down at him as she became aware of his gaze. Putting a handful of small, white pills on the nightstand beside him, she added, "Those are strong, and you have to take them with food. You're gonna need a good supply of painkillers; your arms are going to hurt like all hell for a few days."

He nodded without much movement, brushing off her concern. "Yeah. I'll be alright."

For a moment, he looked into her face, uncertain if what he wanted to say was the right thing. The past was sometimes better left unstirred. She must have seen the doubt in his expression, because she looked back, one brow rising very slightly.

"What?"

"I have something of yours, something I wanted to give back to you a long time ago," he said, making a small gesture at the floor to one side of the bed. She looked down, then crouched beside the duffle that was half under the bed. He heard the zipper's burr as she opened it.

"What am I looking for?"

"A leather pouch, not big," he told her.

Ellie reached in, pushing her hand through his clothing, his few books, and tapes, feeling around until her fingers felt the smoothness of the pouch. She drew it out and handed it to him. He could hardly move his hands and his mouth twisted slightly as he looked up at her.

"Uh … yeah, can you open it?"

"Sorry." She took it back and opened it, tipping the contents onto the side of the bed. He saw her eyes go immediately to the locket. Saw her reach for it, picking it up by the chain and holding it in front of her.

"I thought I'd lost this," she said softly, catching the locket in one hand, her thumb rubbing lightly over the front. He had the feeling that she'd forgotten him as she stared at it, the impression dispelled as she drew in a breath and turned her head to look at him.

"Where did you get this?"

Her tone was more wondering than accusing, he thought, looking at the confusion that filled her face, seeing her trying to figure out how the hell he could have come by it – and how he'd known it was hers.

"I'm sorry. The chain was broken. I was going to fix it and take it back to you but you were gone from the hospital by the time I got back," he explained, the memories all clear to him now.

She looked blankly from him to the locket.

"What? What do you mean? When you …" she faltered, the words stopping and leaving a silence between them. His brows drew together as he saw a small crease appear between hers.

"You don't remember? What happened to you?"

She shook her head. "I – I never had … no, I can't remember anything around that time."

Looking away, Dean swallowed as he realised he was going to have to tell her about it, relive it again. "We were hunting the thing that attacked your family," he said heavily. "Didn't get there soon enough, not soon enough to save your parents. We found you in the house. You were still alive, barely." He watched the reactions pass over her face.

"You know what did it?" she asked and he nodded.

"A witch," he said, remembering the feeling of being boiled alive in his own skin before his bullet had ended her life and that spell with it. "She created an elemental, sent it after a few families. Grudges, it looked like."

"A grudge?" Ellie asked disbelievingly. "Over what?"

"I don't remember," he said, a bit apologetically. He remembered all too well the petty nature of the witch's motivation against the families she'd sent the fetch to kill. He didn't think it was going to help the woman sitting beside him to hear how trivial a desire had wiped out her parents and had almost killed her.

"My Dad cleaned out your wounds …" His eyes moved to her shoulder, and she stiffened slightly, as if a memory existed for her of the pain of that moment. Against his palms and fingertips he felt a deep shudder, the sense memory of her reaction when he'd had to hold her down. "We called the cops and the paramedics; but we couldn't stay."

"The doctor at the hospital told me that someone had made sure the wounds were clean," she said distractedly, looking back to the locket in her palm for a moment. Her gaze lifted to him. "He said that was probably why I was still alive when I reached the hospital."

Turning to look at Sam, she added, "Sam said your father died, last year. I'm sorry."

Dean's eyes closed briefly. "Yeah."

He felt her looking at him, tried to keep his face impassive against the grief and the flickering surge of shame that filled him. There was nothing he could do to make that right, to make it how it should've been. Against his hand, he felt the warmth of her fingers, curled around his for a moment. The touch imparted a light shock that tingled through his nervous system, gone as he opened his eyes.

"It's fine," he said, wondering if he'd imagined that light pressure and his reaction to it. She didn't look like she'd moved, her gaze was on her hands, holding the locket in her lap. He remembered something else. "Did your parents know that they were targeted?"

She shook her head, the crease reappearing between her brows. "I don't know. They told me I was unconscious for days after I was brought in, some kind of hairline fracture to my head. I didn't –" she hesitated and he saw it, a tiny, involuntary flinch from some memory or thought. "I didn't know much about my parent's, uh, work life. I was only home to get a letter for the school I'd been at."

She looked away and he recognised the deliberate omissions in the brief account, not sure if she was lying to him or to herself.

"They contacted my aunt, my father's sister. She organised a transfer to Boston," she continued, glancing back at him with a slight shrug.

Dean nodded. "I know. You were gone when I went back." He looked at her, sensing rather than seeing her uncertainties. "We killed the witch, a week later."

He wasn't sure she'd heard that. She'd turned the locket over in her hand, and he watched her reading the inscription. He saw the brightness of her eyes, tears filling them but not spilling over as she opened the locket and looked at the photographs inside.

For a long moment, she sat completely still, her gaze fixed on the images. Then she stood up and walked away from the bed, sitting down at the table near the room's tiny kitchenette, ducking her head into her crossed arms. He couldn't hear her, but he could see her shoulders shaking, the small tremors shivering the braid that lay down her back and catching the light.

Watching her sitting there, he felt his throat closing a little. Everyone he'd met in this life had lost someone. He didn't know why he felt her loss so strongly.

* * *

Sam opened his eyes. He felt better for the half-dozing sleep he'd had. He turned his head on the pillow, seeing Dean still lying in the other bed, his eyes closed. His brother's face was pale, the freckles standing out. He wondered if he needed something for the pain. Easing himself into a sitting position, he looked around the silent room. Ellie sat at the table, her face hidden in her arms.

"Dean?" Sam asked softly, unsure of what'd happened in the time he'd been out. Dean's eyes opened, dark and shadowed as he looked over.

"You okay?" Sam asked. He couldn't pinpoint the cause but he was troubled by his brother's expression.

Dean nodded. "Yeah, Sam, I'm fine." His gaze shifted to look at the woman sitting at the table, his voice dropping as he added, "She's not."

Sam looked back at Ellie. He swung his legs off the bed and got to his feet, walking slowly to the table. He pulled one of the chairs around beside Ellie and sat down.

"Ellie?"

She lifted her head from her arms, her eyelids swollen and red-rimmed, the colour washed out of her face. Sam felt a moment's surprise at the sight. He hadn't thought her to be vulnerable. Not vulnerable enough to let anyone else see it, he amended the thought as she straightened in the chair, rubbing the palms of her hands over her face and giving him a slightly wry smile.

"Sorry," she said, drawing in a deep breath. "Just letting go. It's been a long time, but I guess I'm finally letting go." She rubbed her fingertips along the line of her brow, closing her eyes.

He nodded, his gaze going to the locket on the table. There was something about it that seemed familiar. "Your parents?"

Ellie followed his gaze. "Yeah. I … uh, thank you, both …" She turned in the chair to look at Dean. "… of you. For what you did."

Sam glanced at Dean, seeing him turn his head away. He looked back at Ellie.

"What we did?" he asked. He looked down at the locket, recognising it belatedly. Dean had asked him what the inscription said, not long after they'd left Palo Alto. He hadn't told Sam where he'd found it until a few months after that. "Wait a minute – you're the –"

"The elemental job, in Spokane," Dean said, and Sam looked back at Ellie.

"Why'd you become a hunter, after that?" Sam asked her, his forehead furrowing up. She'd been a kid, and she'd had some family, Dean'd said.

She seemed to consider her answer, finally looking at him with a tired smile. "I couldn't sleep."

He stared at her and she shrugged.

"It's true, I couldn't remember what'd happened, but things came out when I was sleeping and eventually I stopped getting more than a couple of hours a night," she said. "My aunt was frantic, she tried everything. I must have been the most costly eleven-year old orphan ever."

"So you became a hunter?" Sam asked again, his tone dubious as he tried to see the connection.

"I started to read," she corrected him absently, her gaze a little unfocussed. "Everything I could find on the unexplained, mythology, even psychopaths since the police refused to rule that out. Can't say it helped much with sleeping but I found a place that specialised in old books and the owner helped me out a lot, had a lot of contacts overseas and, I found out a lot later, some experience with what'd happened to my parents."

She was silent for a moment and Sam slid a sideways glance at his brother. Dean was lying back against the pillows, his eyes closed. Sam could see he was listening, the particular tension in his brother's frame obvious to him if probably not to anyone else.

"I read everything I could find," she said finally. "And I learned whatever I could from whoever would teach me."

"You taught yourself to hunt?" Sam asked disbelievingly.

"No, I found teachers," she said, her expression a little distant. "Some of them weren't in the life, they just knew things that I thought it would be useful to know. Some of them were and they tried their damnedest to get me to quit. My aunt was horrified by the things she found me studying." She shook her head at the memory of that conversation. "But she understood that I needed it to be stronger, needed it to feel safer. I didn't tell her what it was all for."

She looked back at him, shrugging slightly. "I was lucky. I made a lot of mistakes the first couple of years. Someone was looking out for me, because I probably should have died the first time out. And I didn't really think there were any others like me, not when I started. I thought I was alone."

Sam looked at Dean. They'd known there was a community out there, far-flung and paranoid and most of them too distorted by what had happened to them to be comfortable with other people. He thought of his father. When he'd started, he must have felt that way as well. At least, until he'd found Missouri.

"The police told me that they had no idea of what had killed my parents. I could see from their eyes that they'd never seen anything like it. They wouldn't let me see the bodies – or what was left of them. The funerals were held before I got out of the hospital, their remains cremated and scattered over the sea." Her face had closed up, hiding her emotions. "I met a few people who knew a few people, and I got better. I met Michael when I was seventeen, and I worked with him until he died."

Sam blinked at that. Seventeen. And she'd been hunting before that, on her own. She hadn't been kidding when she'd said she'd been lucky. His father had told them, over and over, luck always ran out. It was knowledge and skill and experience that took care of business when luck decided to disappear. How much of those could she have had at fifteen? Sixteen?

She closed her eyes, pushing aside the memories that lurked, that she didn't want to look at or think about. "If I'm moderately successful at what I do, it's because of him."

Exhaling softly, she opened her eyes, looking at him as she said, "Michael's the reason I've been hunting demons. He was an expert, possibly more so than Bill Harvelle. He'd been – he knew things that most hunters never dreamed of. He told me that something was coming, something big. He said that for a thousand years, demons couldn't break through to our world; they could influence our minds, our decisions, yes. The least powerful could creep through the cracks and possess the weak, people whose mental state is battered, or broken. But walking around as they are now? No. He said it was impossible."

"Impossible is getting to be a word that might need its definition changed," Sam commented.

"Yeah. You're in the middle of it. You two, and the people who are close to you," she told him. "I don't know how or why, but it's your name that comes up, and it's not just the demons I've questioned. Some of the other hunters have heard it too."

Sam nodded. "We know."

"What do you know about it, Ellie?" Dean asked softly from the bed. She turned in the chair to look at him.

"Not much," she said apologetically. "Demon whispers, mostly. There are too many to discount now. They talk about an army, and human leaders. Two of the demons are fighting for the command of Hell, or something worse. It's vague and some of what they say is contradictory." She turned to look back at Sam. "I've been looking for a year, but all I've found is that one of the demons is probably a Fallen and the other is near the top of the tree in Hell's upper management."

"Yellow Eyes," Sam said, looking at his brother. "Ellie thinks that he's one of the Fallen."

"What are the 'Fallen'?" Dean asked.

"The Fallen were the angels who supported Lucifer, when he was cast down from Heaven," Ellie said, getting to her feet. "They were imprisoned with him in Hell."

* * *

She walked to the bathroom, pushing the door wide and turning on the tap, splashing cold water over her face and neck. Turning the tap off and drying her face, she looked briefly at her reflection in the mirror. The redness was fading from her eyes, but the lids would be swollen for hours.

Shock, she told herself as she saw the faint tremor in her fingers as she pushed a loose strand of hair back and tucked it behind her ear. Just shock at finally learning what had happened, meeting the men who'd been there, who knew about it. She couldn't stay here any longer, though. She needed time to deal with the mess, with whatever came back. She thought of the fragment of memory that had hit her in Ellen's place and pushed it aside impatiently. Not the time, not the place.

Pulling her clothes down from the rail, she rolled them up and shoved them into the bulky leather pack, picking it up and slinging it over her shoulder. Inside it, wrapped up in several pieces of clothing, the knife that could kill demons weighed heavily. It was a potent weapon. She thought they needed it more than she did.

She came out of the bathroom and stood by the table, looking from Dean to Sam.

"That demon had a knife," she said, reaching into her pack for the bundled blade. "A knife that can kill demons. I think you should keep it."

Unwrapping the knife, she sat on the edge of Dean's bed, holding it flat on her palm for them to look at. Sam got up from his chair, leaning over her.

The blade was long and tapered, the cutting edge curving upwards. The tang ran the full length of the hilt, the dark, oily-looking metal visible at the base. Sam lifted it, brows lifting a little as he felt the balance. Looking at him, Ellie nodded.

"Like a throwing knife, the hilt doesn't add much to the weight," she commented.

The hilt was bone, he thought as he passed it to his brother, polished and smooth.

"What's that?" Dean angled the blade awkwardly in front of his non-swollen eye and Ellie leaned closer, seeing the fine markings etched around the base of the knife near the hilt.

"No clue," she told him. "I don't know what it's made of either. It's got very little flex, but if it's steel it's been forged in a way I never heard of." She looked from the knife to his face. "It's a one-stop, you need it."

Sam shook his head, glancing to his brother for confirmation. "No. You're hunting on your own. You need it more than we do."

"Sam, not true. I'm not … noticed … like you two are. I'm not on their hit list."

"Maybe," Dean said, his voice deeper than usual, thickened by some emotion that wasn't evident on his face. "After today, you might be. I agree with Sam, you need to keep it."

He held it out, the fine muscles around his eyes tensing with the effort of lifting it.

She looked at him, her expression troubled as she took it back from him. "They'll come after you, eventually. They won't leave you alone."

He nodded. He knew that. Sam knew it too.

She stood up and walked to her pack, opening the front pocket. Pulling out a small silk bag, she untied the drawstring, and pulled out two flat stones. They were black, highly polished, engraved with a complex sigil that couldn't be seen unless the stones were held obliquely to the light. She laid them on the table.

"Put these with something you carry all the time. They'll hide you from random notice," she said, replacing the bag in the pack. "They're not powerful enough to avoid a determined search for you, but they deflect casual attention."

Sam picked one up. It felt cool and smooth against his fingertips. "Where are they from?"

"Originally? I don't know," she said, looking at him. "I was in Morocco, a few years ago, and I met an old man in the desert south of Tangiers. He gave me five of them. They worked pretty well. I'm still alive."

Sam felt a bubble of questions rising at the casual explanation but he shook his head and nodded instead of letting them out. If the stones could keep her alive, they sure couldn't hurt to carry around.

"Thanks."

"Keep the knife. I'd feel better if I knew you had it," Dean said, his gaze steady on her face. He didn't want to argue about it. His brother had filled him a little on what had happened after he'd been taken, her showing up, figuring out where he'd be, working out how to take the demons down. The way he saw it, he thought that maybe they owed her. And hunting alone was a fool's job, his father had said, dryly acknowledging that he'd been doing it for too many years himself.

She might've been lucky, she might be good, he thought. But he found he didn't want to hear from Ellen she'd gone down in a fight where that knife might've made the difference.

"Until you need it then," she countered mildly, seeing the determination in the lines bracketing his mouth. "If you do, you can contact me through Ellen. She'll pass on a message."

She lifted the pack and settled it comfortably on her shoulder, turning and walking for the door.

"You're leaving now?"

Sam saw his brother struggling to sit up, Dean's face screwing up with the pain that the movement stirred. "Wait, uh, just – look, maybe we can help each other out?"

Ellie turned around, shaking her head. "You know as much as I do now," she told them bluntly.

"I've got, uh, other commitments right now. And I guess you do too." She looked down, hesitating for a moment, her hand resting on the door knob. "If I hear anything, or find anything that you can use, I'll call."

She opened the door then turned back to them again as she paused on the threshold. "But be more careful from now on, okay? Next time you might not have someone around to save your asses."

Sam grinned in rueful acknowledgement, his gaze flicking to his brother. He turned back to see Ellie smile suddenly, a smile that seemed to light up her eyes and face, banishing the hunter and leaving a young woman of striking beauty before it disappeared. She turned away and closed the door behind her.

Looking back at his brother, he saw something in Dean's face as his brother stared at the door, uncertain of what it was. "You okay?"

Dean blinked and turned to look at him, the unknown expression replaced by a slightly sardonic look.

"No, I'm starving," he said, looking at the pills on the nightstand. "I'm supposed to eat something before I can take those."

Sam nodded, automatically getting up. "What do you want?"

"Anything," his brother replied vaguely, his eyes closing.

* * *

Dean opened his eyes as the door closed behind his brother, hearing the familiar rumble of the car starting up.

He'd known that the demons knew them, some of them. Most of them, he thought, his mental tone disparaging. They'd taken him easily and he hadn't told his brother that he'd just been bait. Hadn't told him what the demon had said. Easing himself against the pain of his shoulders, he thought that Sam probably knew anyway. He had no idea of how he was supposed to obey his father's last command and protect his brother against the demons. They could run, keep on the move, try and find out more about what the hell was happening, but the weapon they needed was gone and Yellow Eyes was still around and it felt like the whole fucking world was against them.

He thought of what Ellie had said, about the demons she'd been questioning. How long would it be before another hunter found out the same things? A hunter who might not be inclined to help them, who would think that Sam was a danger to humanity? If he had to protect his brother against his own kind as well …

Since their father had gone, the responsibility had become unbearable. He didn't think of it most of the time, tried to ignore it, tried to keep his game face on for Sammy. He didn't know how long he could keep doing that, hiding it from his brother, trying to hide it from himself. He was so goddamned tired.

* * *

_**AN:**__ This story is the first in a series, introducing Ellie Morgan. The series attempts to fit the additional stories in between the canon episodes of the show without disturbing the storylines already present. Some leeway has been taken with the canon, however, for the purposes of expanding the potential of the story. The next in the series is _One Night_. I hope you're enjoying the ride._


End file.
